AY SS as? 








PRESENTED BY 
Miss Ethel Ricker 


from the 
Library of her Father 
Nathan Clifford Ricker 
Head of the Department of 
Architecture, 1875-191h 





720 


L_S56a 
SC 








Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


httos://archive.org/details/architectureintrOOleth_1 


HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 


No. 38 


Editors: 


HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 

ProF, GILBERT MURRAY, LiTT.D., 
LL.D., F.B.A. 

Pror. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 

ProF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A, 


THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 


16mo cloth, 50 cents net, by mail 56 cents 
LITERATURE AND ART 
Already Published 


SHAKESPEARE ....... + By JoHN MASEFIELD 
ENGLISH LITERATURE— 

MODERN (4)\0)'e) 2's ele « «6, 6 iby G, EL Meare 
LANDMARKS IN FRENCH 

LITERATURES oi tls Na ees! eo DY Glue TRACHIEY, 
A SHORT HISTORY OF ARCHI- 

EAST IG REG: tebe ck a a a aie be OV ves LORS 


Future Issues 


GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA By W. P. Trent and Joun 
ERSKINE 

THE WRITING OF ENGLISH . By W. T. Brewster 
ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAIS- 

SORA CB 9) es Yel catia ve ctipcive alwys wl DY oaks OG IER: Rn ee 
ENGLISH LITERATURE— 
MINCE DRE VAL. 0) auiare. dle in) ee) Bo We ay Melee 
GREAT WRITERS OF RUSSIA . By C. T. Hacsert Wricut ~ 
ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL . By Miss Jane Harrison 
DHE RENAESSANCE oi cage sity ie By Mrs. R. A. Tayior 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . . By L. Pearsatt Smita 


ARCHITECTURE 


AN INTRODUCTION 
TO 


THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF THE 
ART OF BUILDING 


BY 


Wirok. LE Li ABY 


*¢ Man makes beauty of that which he loves.’ — Renan 





NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
LONDON 
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 


aha \ 








A 
P <Lnef ) % 


& 


ae a 4 


f 
a 


v4 


os SY GarS7 7, 


o5 thhtar, Y 


CHAP, 


II 
III 
IV 


VI 


VII 


VIII 
Ix 


xI 
XII 


XIII 
XIV 


xV 


CONTENTS 


ARCHZOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNA- 

MENT ° . . e se . 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE . , : 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS . ! ‘ j 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING——-METHODS AND IDEAS 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN 

ASIA AND EUROPE . ’ : d 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT 

AFTER PERFECTION... : q 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEER- 

ING BUILDING . é ; / , 
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS 
THE EASTERN CYCLE \ , ; ‘ 
ROMANESQUE ART—-NEW BLOOD IN ARCHI- 

TECTURE es e ° s ° ° 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS : } 
FRENCH GOTHIC—THE ARCHITECTURE OF 


ENERGY . ° ° ° ° . 
ENGLISH GOTHIC . ° ° ° ° 


THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF 
RHETORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF 
FIRST PRINCIPLES. ° ° ° 


THE MODERN POSITION——-CONCLUSION ° 


BIBLIOGRAPHY ° ° ° ° ° 
INDEX . ° ° ° ° ° ° 


PAGE 


18 
34 
D3 


67 


380 


107 
132 
157 


169 
183 


200 
211 


229 
237 
253 
255 





BYZANTINE CAPITAL 


This capital is a work of the sixth century, and bears 
the monogram of the Emperor Justinian on the abacus. 
In the eleventh century it was brought to Venice and 
re-used in the church of St. Mark. 


ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER I 
ARCHEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNAMENT 


Two arts have changed the surface of the 
world, Agriculture and Architecture. Perhaps 
the scale of architectural activity is not 
generally realized. The art of building is 
concerned not only with single structures but 
with cities, and hence with whole countries, 
for Egypt, Greece, and Italy were groups of 
cities rather than geographical spaces empty 
of men and dwellings. Architecture is the 
matrix of civilization. In this small volume I 
wish, while outlining the larger facts of the 
history of architecture, especially to bring out 
its origins and to call attention to the great 
contributions which from time to time have 
been made to its powers by divers schools. 
A history of architecture might be written 
according to several schemes; it might be 
a chronology and description of individual 
works—a collection oe biographies of build- 


8 ARCHITECTURE 


ings; it might treat of the rise, fall and 
interaction of different schools; or it could 
trace out when and how each new thing 
of value was brought into architecture, con- 
sidered as a whole. In an exhaustive history 
the great facts may be hidden by the detail, 
so that one may not see the city for the houses. 
A small book, which does not permit of dealing 
with individual buildings, might better suggest 
the onrush of perpetually changing art which, 
while we try to grasp it, has already put on 
another form. Although it may be convenient 
to study the art historically, it must be remem- 
bered that archeology is not architecture, any 
more than the history of painting is art; 
archeology is history, architecture is the 
practical art of building, not only in the past, 
but now and in the future. Yet even in a 
history the general scope and powers of 
architecture might be suggested. 

On the other hand, the wall, the pier, the 
arch, the vault, are elements which should 
be investigated like the lever and the screw. 
Modern builders need a classification of archi- 
tectural factors irrespective of time and 
country, a classification by essential variation. 
Some day we shall get a morphology of the 
art by some architectural Linnzus or Darwin, 
who will start from the simple cell and relate 
to it the most complex structures. In archi- 
tecture more than anywhere we are the slaves 


ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT.. 9 


of names and categories, and so long as the 
whole field of past architectural experiment 
is presented to us accidentally only under 
historical schedules, designing architecture is 
likely to be conceived as scholarship rather 
than as the adaptation of its accumulated 
powers to immediate needs—the_ disposition 
of its elements, walls, piers and arches, for 
maximum efficiency relative to a given pur- 
pose. The lack of such a true classification 
is in part the reason why modern architects 
swing from playing at Greek to playing at 
Gothic, and then back again to Greek, with 
pathetically ineffectual enthusiasm. 

Even in an historical narrative it may be 
possible to bring out principles and ideas 
rather than to describe examples, and the 
writer would, above all, like to suggest a 
general theory of architecture as a result of 
the survey of the past. To anticipate, it may 
be said here that great art is not a question 
of shapes and appearances which may be 
copied, it is fine response to noble require- 
ment; a living architecture is always being 
hurled forward from change to change. 

* % % % ¥ 

In the introduction to the great History of 
Art in Antiquity by Perrot and Chipiez we are 
told that ‘‘ no satisfactory definition has ever 
been given of the word architecture, and yet 
when we use it every one knows what we 


10 ARCHITECTURE 


mean.” That is rather a dangerous assump- 
tion. The difficulty of defining the word 
comes from the feeling that architecture is a 
high and poetic word, while the mass of 
building in our cities is not highly poetic. 
Therefore there is a tendency to think that 
architecture is only decorated or romantic 
building. But what is a decorated building ? 
A gin-palace at the next corner drips with 
much decoration, while the pyramids had none. 
What is a noble and romantic building ? Is 
not an old cottage of cob and thatch, which 
seems to have risen self-built out of the 
ground, nobler and infinitely more touching 
than the last new and expensive villa is likely 
to be? Some inquirers, not satisfied with 
such a test as size and ornament—that is, of 
cost—say that architecture should have an 
expression over and above the mere essentials 
of building. But here, again, a difficulty 
arises— What is mere building ? Every build- 
ing carries some sort of expression, some 
essential appeal to the imagination. The 
first definition of architecture which satisfied 
me for a time—it was struck off in conversation 
with a friend—was that architecture was 
building touched with emotion. But what is 
usually understood by such claims is that some 
expressional content should be consciously 
embodied in a building. Yet we cannot think 
that old works of architecture thus had their 


ARCHZOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 11 


expression given to them arbitrarily. The 
cottage, the bridge, the castle,—were they 
intended to look pathetic, bold, romantic,— 
or is the due expression inherent in the thing 
itself, so far as it is right and true? It would 
be difficult to prove that the most superb 
castle was designed to look romantic, it was 
designed to be strong. The plough, the hay- 
rick, the ship, are all highly poetic, but their 
makers do not think of poetry. The more 
real such a thing is, the closer to need and 
nature, the more romantic it will be also. A 
self-conscious esthetic “ appeal ”’ is likely to 
become a disease of art, the true appeal is 
a fact. Barns, wagons and lighthouses do 
not appeal, they are, or I should say, were, 
for I saw a lighthouse some months since on 
which no expense had been spared to make 
it esthetic, and it illuminated the whole 
problem. 

We cannot reach any satisfactory defini- 
tion of architecture on the principle that 
architecture is good building, and _ build- 
ing itself is bad building—it embodies an 
absurdity. 

On the other side it is said, “* Much building 
is mean and poor, is that architecture ?” 
Not that, either. Every art must be judged 
on its positive side, by its strength, not by its 
weakness and defects. Yet to be real is not 
all; there is evidently a scale of realities. 


12 ARCHITECTURE 


All architecture is not great architecture. 
The other day I passed a large group of well- 
built factory chimneys—tall, daring struc- 
tures that were real enough, and exemplified to 
perfection the principle of balance. I should 
have known them as beautiful if they had 
been minarets in Persia, but here, it must be 
confessed, they did not fill my mind with 
unmixed joy; the malign effect of their smoke 
on the landscape was evidently a serious set- 
off against their unaffected reality. The mind 
unconsciously pierces far beyond mere shape 
to the soul of a building. 

We possess in Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of 
Architecture a most stimulating treatise on 
modes of beauty in architecture, but with all 
its power and insight it is only a fragment. 
It is not concerned with building, the art of 
making chambered structures, the rearing of 
walls and balancing of vaults, but with the 
added interests of painted and sculptured 
stories. It is a treatise on the temper and 
conditions from which noble architectural 
ornamentation will spring. At the back of it 
was an idea only clearly stated in a little note 
added to a later edition of the work—“ The 
founding of all beautiful design on natural 
form was the principle I had during the 
arrangement of this volume most prominently 
in mind ... there is too much stress laid 
throughout this volume on probity in pictur- 


ARCHEOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 138 


esque treatment, and not enough on probity 
in material construction.”? His concern being 
with the decorative matter in architecture, he 
identified this matter with architecture itself. 
If, he says in effect, we isolate architecture 
from mere building, however noble the mere 
building may be, it is only sculpture with other 
forms of story and decoration. This, of course, 
is true, and if we are to approach architecture 
as a whole it is plain it must not be so isolated 
from the most of its very self. 

It is impossible to differentiate architecture 
from building, and probably we shall not find 
any need for so doing if we realize how truly 
interesting are building and buildings, and 
that it is in all buildings throughout the ages, 
not in a picked few, that we find the impress 
of man and his aspirations. For us, in this 
volume, architecture is the art of building and 
of disposing buildings. Good architecture is 
masterly structure with adequate workman- 
ship; the highest architecture is likely to 
have fit sculpture and painting integrally 
bound up with it. 

* x ea x tt 

If architecture was born of need it soon 
showed some magic quality, and all true 
building touches depths of feeling and opens 
the gates of wonder. 

The men who first balanced one stone over 
two others must have looked with astonish- 


14 ARCHITECTURE 


ment at the work of their hands, and have 
worshipped the stones they had setup. Any 
primitive work of man was more than his 
own, it was something found out; and who 
can say how much wonder at the magic 
of art was associated with the “‘ worship of 
images’?? In becoming -fit every work 
attains some form and enshrines some mys- 
tery; to the shipwright his work was a 
creature. If Stonehenge is so amazing to 
us, what a wonder-work must it have been to 
the men of our islands who reared up the 
mighty stones. This element of wonder lasted 
long through the ages, and it will persist 
while work is done in the old way by keeping 
close to nature and necessity. But there are 
some elements which seem to have disappeared 
for ever; such are: ideas of sacredness and 
sacrifice, of ritual rightness, of magic sta- 
bility and correspondence with the universe, 
of perfection of form and proportion. Wren, 
philosopher as he was, decided that man’s 
delight in setting up columns was acquired 
through worshipping in the groves of the 
forest, and modern research has come to 
much the same view, for Sir Arthur Evans 
shows that in the first European age columns 
were gods. All over Europe the early morning 
of architecture was spent in the worship of 
great stones. 
i ds x * ¥ 


ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 15. 


No recipes can be given for producing fine 
architecture. In a noble living school, size, 
splendour of material, accuracy of workman- 
ship are graces, but the less there is of these 
in an essentially mean building the better. 
When we are going in the wrong direction the 
right things are on the left. It is all a question 
of the quality of the effort over a long period 
of time. 

The powers of all architecture are limited by 
the materials in general use. If it be forest 
country, wood would be the chief material; 
if it be rocky, stone buildings would be early 
developed; if these materials are difficult to 
obtain, there is yet another to fall back on— 
this is clay, the importance of which in forming 
architectural elements is often overlooked, 
although in the shape of burnt brick it is still 
to-day our chief material. These different 
forms of matter give rise to three types of 
construction: wooden, by beams jointed 
together into framing; stone, by blocks 
assembled together, either balanced only, or 
linked by cramps or by cementing; clay, by 
continuous aggregation. 

Ancient bricks were not burnt, they were 
dry mud and they were bedded in wet mud, so 
that the whole became one mass; in modern 
brickwork the cementing should be as strong 
as the brick, so that the wall becomes con- 
tinuous. 


16 ARCHITECTURE 


Kven when wrought stone has been generally 
used for ceremonial architecture, wood and 
clay have remained in the background 
as valuable materials useful for secondary 
purposes. 

The decorative elements of architecture find 
their origin in delight in finish, colour and 
variety; in survivals from an earlier type of 
building, as wooden details copied in stone; 
or they were more or less pictorial. Such 
decoration itself had a utili- 
=: tarian purpose, generally 
bees that of carrying over the 
4 virtues of the things imitated 
} to the things made. As 
Capart says, the recent dis- 
coveries of prehistoric art 
in Egypt “enable us to 
establish the utilitarian 
origin of the manifestations which we group 
together under the name of esthetic. This 
utilitarian purpose is in almost. every case 
confused with a religious or rather with a 
magical purpose.”’ 

The earliest pottery carries forward either 
the forms of gourds or of baskets. Even such 
a rudimentary “‘ pattern ”’ as the spiral seems 
to have originated as an imitation on clay 
pots of the shells in the handsomer hard stone 
vases. Generally speaking, a “ pattern ”’ is 
a simplified or repeated “ picture.”? Fig. 1 





ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 17 


shows the decoration on a prehistoric pot from 
Nagada restored from some fragments of 
mine. The ornament consists of flamingoes 
between two rows of mountains. The whole 
may be a shorthand picture of the Nile. 


CHAPTER II 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 


ONLY by searching out origins can we 
discover the initial force which carried art 
forward. In the main we find two great fac- 
tors, response to need—the basis in utility— 
and, secondly, a magical and mystical element. 
The need, of course, may go far beyond the 
provision of daily bread and shelter; the 
Egyptians, for instance, wanted an indestruct- 
ible resting-place, and so made the pyramids. 
The magical instinct, in seeking to re-create 
types and to set up sympathetic relations, led 
to imitation, to ideas of proportion, and to a 
search after perfection. 

The first great need of all architecture is 
need itself, honest response to high necessity. 
Taste, caprice, pomposity and make-believe 
are no true art-masters. All formulas, codes 
and grammars are diseases which only show. 
themselves in a time of impaired vitality. 

Before the historical period made known to 
us by chronicles and inscriptions long ages 
shade off into the gulf of time; ages which in 
some degree may be ace mada S from the 


ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 19 


remnants of man’s art. For Europe the 
opening of the historical period may be put 
at about 1000 B.c. The earliest examples of 
prehistoric art known in Europe are the 
drawings of animals made by the cave-men 
at a time that must so long have preceded 
writing that we must look on drawing as an 
outcome of a desire to imitate and a natural 
aptitude. Drawing, indeed, was the parent 
of writing. 

In the year 1832 the Danish scholar 
Thomsen made a great generalization as to 
the early history of the arts in determining 
three periods which followed one another: 
the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron 
age. Iron only came into general use at a 
time about coincident with the beginnings 
of European history. Before this there was 
a long period when tools and weapons were 
made of bronze, and still earlier they were of 
flints and stones. The farther we go back in 
time the greater, we may assume, was the 
relative importance of the arts. Here, as else- 
where, there is a law of diminishing returns. 
Early inventions must have seemed like revela- 
tions, and skilled craftsmen were looked upon 
as magicians. The art of building seems first 
to have gathered power and to have arrived 
at what we may call self-consciousness in the 
valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris. The 
relations between the arts of these great 


20 ARCHITECTURE 


river valleys has not yet been fully worked 
out. It is certain that they resemble one 
another closely in many respects; possibly 
the art of Mesopotamia preceded that of 
Egypt; but by the Nile a large class of pre- 
historic works has been discovered which has 
as yet no parallel in western Asia. Perhaps 
the mud of the great rivers has been the most 
precious of Nature’s gifts to man. By the 
Nile, as a result of its miraculous fertility, he 
may first have learned agriculture and the 
art of casting his bread upon the waters. 
Herodotus says of the Egyptians, “ They 
gather the fruits of the earth with less labour 
than any other people.” With agriculture 
and settled life came trade and the stored-up 
energy which might essay by erections on the 
face of the earth to improve on caves and pits 
and other primitive dwellings. By the Nile, 
perhaps, the people first aimed to overpass 
the routine satisfaction of the barest need. 
Long before dynastic Egypt was in being 
a strong people inhabited the land who 
developed many arts which they handed on 
to the pyramid-builders. They formed a 
wonderfully artistic stock, although they were 
only semi-naked “ savages,”’ using flint instru- 
ments and painting their pottery and build- 
ings in a style a good deal like bushman art. 
They wrought most beautiful vases of fine 
marbles “‘ quite modern ”? in form; and they 


ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 21 


appear to have invented square building. At 
the British Museum and the Ashmolean are 
excellent collections of this pre-dynastic art. 
It will be necessary to give a disproportion- 
ate space in this little book to early days in 
Egypt, for here we shall best find the origins 
of architecture as a whole, and origins are of 
great importance for framing a theory of art. 
As Prof. Petrie says, ‘‘ We know more details 
of the origins of the arts in Egypt than in 
any otherland. To-day we can show how every 
feature arose, and we can date, to a single 
generation, the adoption of stone for building.”” 
A few years ago it was thought that nothing 
Egyptian existed earlier than the Great 
Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty; now many 
works of art of the first three dynasties have 
been identified, as well as large classes of 
pre-dynastic and primitive art. The question 
of Egyptian chronology is as yet troubled by 
controversy. It is founded on ancient lists 
of the kings with the terms of their reigns. 
The sequence of the names is becoming sure, 
but the length of the reigns is very uncertain. 
Estimates vary from about 3000 to 5500 B.c. 
for the beginning of the First Dynasty. The 
system of Brugsch, adopted with modifica- 
tions at the British Museum, opens the First 
Dynasty at 4400. It has been found possible 
to check the dates as far back as the beginning 
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the result 


22 ARCHITECTURE ; 


that this has been reduced from about 1700 
B.c. to about 1580 B.c. Again, German 
scholars have brought to bear some astro- 
nomical facts, and as a result they place the 
beginning of the dynasties at 3315. This 
estimate is known as the Berlin system. I 
am incompetent to appreciate many of the 
highly technical arguments involved, but 
such rough tests as I have been able to apply 
incline me to the view that the Berlin system 
is likely to be right. Thus, taking the kings 
as given by Dr. Budge in the official publica- 
tion of the British Museum, we have eighty- 
three kings in the 1260 years from 1600 (or 
1580) to 340 B.c., giving an average of a little 
over fifteen years. Now, the reigns given 
for the early dynasties average much longer. 
Prof. Petrie names twenty-seven kings as hav- 
ing reigned during a period of 779 years—that 
is, for the first three dynasties. This results in 
an average of about thirty-three years, and it 
looks as if the estimate had been framed on the 
supposition that three kings filled a century, 
the ordinary rough rule of the succession of 
generations ; whereas, for the better-known 
period they average less than half this. 
American scholars adopt the German sys- 
tem without question, and there are signs that 
this chronology is being accepted by English 
writers. In a volume published about four 
years ago by Mr. King, of the British Museum, 


ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 23 


although he avoids any set discussion of the 
question, he incidentally dates works of the 
early dynastic period as “ about 4000,” while 
Mr. Griffiths, in the new Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, approves with some small reservations 
the shortened scheme. Prof. Petrie, on the 
other hand, still adheres to the longer chron- 
ology, but, with this great exception, we 
may say the general view at the present time 
is that the first dynasties fell in the period 
4000-3000 B.C. 

For Egyptian art, therefore, it: will be neces- 
sary to speak of dynasties, not of years. In 
general terms it is usual to call the first three 
dynasties the Archaic Period, dynasties four 
to six the Old Kingdom, dynasties eleven and 
twelve the Middle Kingdom, and the dynasties 
later than the eighteenth the New Kingdom. 
The history of the two intervals is extremely 
uncertain. 

The great era in Egyptian art, the time 
when it was in its first maturity but still 
eager and experimenting, covered the last 
years of the pre-dynastic period and the first 
four or five dynasties. All that is fresh and 
vital was discovered before the Old Kingdom 
cametoanend. This was a time of passionate 
activity, a period of unparalleled significance 
in the development of culture. Writing was 
introduced, the state was consolidated, the 
arts flourished. 


24 ARCHITECTURE 


The most primitive works of man found 
in Egypt are flint weapons, rude pottery, 
and some graves. The first dwellings were 
probably round huts covered by a cone of 
reeds. Although the circular form passed 
out of use in more formal works, it always 
remained in the background for granaries. 
Pottery was made round long before it was 
thrown on the wheel, and it is as natural that 
the hut for holding people should be 
round as it is for pots, baskets, and 
nests. 

The materials most ready to hand 
for the construction of primitive 
dwellings were reeds, river-mud, and 
palm-branches. Huts built of reeds 
seem to be represented on some early 
relief carvings, as, for instance, on a slate 
palette in the British Museum (fig. 2). The 
earliest structure actually discovered, a pre- 
dynastic tomb found in the sands at Hiera- 
conpolis, is already right-angled. Modern 
people take squareness very much for granted 
as being a self-evident form, but the discovery 
of the square was a very great step in geometry. 
The square hieroglyph of a later time repre- 
sents a mat, or other woven thing, and doubt- 
less the square arose in weaving. May we not 
suggest that at first square rooms were built 
for mats ? 

The tomb at Hieraconpolis is sunk in a pit, 





ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 25 


and the walls lean outwards against the sand. 
Many early tombs of about the First Dynasty 
have been explored at Abydos, and the 
earliest of these were of much the same form as 
the tomb at Hieraconpolis. From the First 
Dynasty onwards it became more customary 
for the tombs to be built above the ground as 
almost solid masses of crude brick. These 
bricks were only dried in the sun, their use was 
a developed form of mud building. In these 
*“mastabas,’? as such tombs are called, the 
walls also lean against the mass of material, 
which in this case, of course, is within— 
and very reasonably—for they are practically 
‘retaining walls.” This battered wall later 
passed into stone structures and became 
typical in Egyptian architecture. Some im- 
mediately pre-dynastic tombs had their 
chambers neatly lined with wooden planks, 
or, rather, a chamber of wood was first built, 
and it was then enclosed with brickwork; 
these crude brick walls around the pit “* were 
only a protective shell around the wooden 
chamber which contained the body.’”? Doubt- 
less houses for the living as well as those for 
the dead were at this time constructed of 
wrought timber. Some representations of 
shrines and buildings on early objects appear 
to show wooden structures, and it seems in 
the nature of things that woodwork would be 
accurately wrought long before any buildings 


26 ARCHITECTURE 


were made of cut stone. In these representa- 
tions we already find posts which are the 
prototypes of later stone columns, having 
swelling projections at the top like capitals. 
On inscriptions from 
the First Dynasty we 
often find a sign (read 
‘tent ’’) like Mexcept 
that the horizontal 
bar is curved. The 
same symbol on many 
monuments of the 
Fourth Dynasty shows 
that the central up- 
right was a slender 
pillar and that the 
side walls and curved roof were made of bundles 
of reeds bound together in rolls, and such a 
construction would well explain the curved 
roofs (fig. 8). Compare a shrine on the late 


papyrus of Ani at the British 
i Museum. The walls and roof 
\ would have been embedded in 


fig. 4. § 

a daubing of clay. In any 
case, the central upright was a wooden post, 
and in some carefully executed hieroglyphs 
it is shown with the shaft shaped into a 
baluster form and having a slightly projecting 
capital. Such a wooden tent pole was the first 
column; except, of course, the mere rough 
post (fig. 3). They were circular, and the 





a Fia. 3. 


ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 27 


** capital ”’ was not a separate member but 
only a projection on the post, probably to 
prevent the horizontal reed bundles from 
slipping. These early indications of the 
forms of the first Egyptian pillars have been 
very fully studied by Foucart, who shows that 
the later stone columns derive from such 
wooden originals. 

Decoration, as we have seen, is frequently a 
survival of what had a function which has 
been forgotten. The beautiful 
archaic carved mace-head in the , 
British Museum (fig. 5) obvi- f4\ 
ously imitates the way in which \js 
earlier clubs were made. The 
pattern carved upon it later 
became well known as the guil- 
loche. Even before the dynasties 
it was usual to construct rich 
furniture with legs like those of bulls, of 
carved ivory, a fashion which has persisted 
ever since. A class of archaic rock-hewn 
tombs at Gizeh and Sakkara had their ceilings 
cut “to resemble small palm trunks,” that 
is, I suppose, into a series of half-rounds 
like a fragment in the British Museum. This 
fragment seems to be a projecting eaves, or 
cornice; if so, it is the prototype of all dentilled 
cornices. 

A very curious type of wall ornamentation 
characterized the first architectural style 





28 ARCHITECTURE 


This is the recessing of the wall-surfaces in a 
succession of vertical channels. This tradi- 
tion was constant during the first five or six 
dynasties, and left its mark in long subsequent 
time. It was elaborated and fixed in struc- 
tures built of crude brick, but the idea of 
vertical division may have been taken over 
from reeds or timber; in any case this method 
of building is likely to be used in dealing with 
fixed units of material such as brick, as, for 
instance, old English chimneys. Fig. 6 
gives the plan of the exterior of a fine first- 
dynasty mastaba at Gizeh. Later, in the 
} . Fourth Dynasty, these 
Z~ walls got copied into 
stone on the exterior of 
other mastabas, also on 
the walls of the chamber in the Third Pyramid, 
and even to miniature scale on sarcophagi. 
One reason for the popularity of the treat- 
ment may have been that each recess became 
a *“‘ false door,’’ and false doors seem to have 
had an important significance in tombs. Each 
recess of this kind in the Third Pyramid is 
crossed by a roller-like member near the top, 
which appears to represent a pole to which 
a curtain would be attached in a real doorway. 
The series of recessed fascize of the classical 
door-jamb possibly derives from the Egyptian 
** false doors.”’ 
The earliest-known moulding is a “roll” 





ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 29 


used horizontally, or up the angles of struc- 
tures. It is usually crossed by lines like 
binding-cords, and it must derive from the 
stiffening rails and angle pieces to which reeds 
were bound. This original source seems to be 
represented on the small relief of a hut on 
the slate palette in the British Museum (fig. 2). 
In the Fourth Dynasty the typical Egyptian 
*‘ gorge ’’ cornice appears, which is the oldest 
of all moulded cornices. The lid of the 
sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid 
was of this form (fig. 7). Accord- 

ing to Prof. Petrie, this gorge 

derives from the nodding crest of 

a palm-branch hedge, but this (7 ~~ 
explanation hardly seems to ac- (JANIS 
count for the fact that works of SY | 
the Fourth Dynasty are usually /4 
finished along the top bya bands Big, 7, 

of vertical “‘reeding’’ with an 

XXX pattern beneath it. This may be traced 
back on the representation of buildings on 
objects of the first dynasties, and when we 
find on the earliest example known of the 
gorge that the vertical divisions do not suggest 
leaves, but are rounded like the “‘ reeding,”’ it 
seems that the only new feature is the pro- 
jecting curve in place of the vertical band. 
Perhaps the vertical strip of “‘ reeding”’ was 
a perspective representation of an eaves of 
pole-ends, and that the gorge is a com- 





80 ARCHITECTURE 


promise between the horizontal and the 
vertical. 

In the pre-dynastic age hard stone had been 
cut with wonderful precision into vases of 
various forms. In building wrought stone 
seems to have been first used during the First 
Dynasty; a pavement of fair stone slabs has 
been found of this age. During the Second 
Dynasty the erection of buildings throughout 
of hewn stone began. This was a 
\yg* remarkable innovation. 
nH Representations of columns have 
been found on objects which date 
from the first dynasties. In the early 
tombs of Abydos models of fluted and 
reeded circular pillars were found, and 
the hieroglyphs of the third and fourth 
dynasties show fluted posts and other 
columns of a tent-pole type having 

Fia.8, 2 Swelling profile something like a 
baluster (fig. 3). Amongst the hiero- 

glyphs at Meydum—third or fourth dynasties 
—is one of a column-like object having the 
baluster form, a spreading capital, and the 
lower part of the shaft wrapped with triangular 
leaves. It is the “‘ papyrus sceptre,”’ and it is 
so exactly like later columns, and so fit to be 
adopted as a column, that we may hardly 
doubt that even at this early time the tent- 
pole columns were completed by painting in a 
similar way (fig. 8). Indeed, is it not probable 





ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 31 


that the papyrus sceptre is a model of a tent- 
pole column? The German excavations at 
Abousir have recently brought to light several 
stone columns of the Fifth Dynasty which 
have swelling profiles, their lower ends 
wrapped with leaves, and papyrus- 47% 
blossom capitals which are stone 
renderings of the same type. Many 
fifth-dynasty capitals, somewhat similar 
to these last, but formed of groups of 
lotus-buds, have recently been dis- ©» 
covered. Prof. Petrie brought one back fig, 9, 
two years ago which is now at Man- 
chester (fig. 10). A very simple capital of 
this type now at Dresden is shown in fig. 9. 
Another form of stone column, also of the 
Fifth Dynasty, was in general use. The cir- 
cular shaft of this diminished up- 
wards to the upper quarter, which 
spread again in a graceful curve 
which was carved into palm leaves. 
Several capitals of this kind have 
been found at Abousir, and there is 
an example of this type of column _ f 
from the pyramid of Unas in the 
British Museum (fig. 11). The whole 
is a monolith, the capital not being yet divided 
from the shaft except by a carved band repre- 
senting a binding of rope, the prototype of the 
necking moulding under later capitals. This 
binding-cord suggests an ultimate source for 








32 ARCHITECTURE 


such capitals in a fashion of tying flowers to 
the posts of huts and shrines, or at least 
of painting flowers and bindings on the 
‘‘capitals’’ of the wooden columns. Stone 
columns required no bases, but wooden posts 
rested on low, round, stone blocks, and these 
were later brought into stone-building. 

In the Fourth Dynasty the Egyptian archi- 
tectural style was fully formed. Works of 

this time are more intelligible 
and more universal than later 
ones, 1n which the _hieratic 
quality—the especial Egyptian 
flavour—is more in evidence. 
Sculpture was an advanced art 
in the first dynasties. At the 
British Museum is a fine ivory 
of a first-dynasty king. As 
Prof. Petrie says, “‘ the civiliza- 





fia ae tion that we find before us 
in the earliest-known history 
appears elaborate and perfect. ... Few 


discoveries of importance were made during 
thousands of years which ensued.” The 
hieroglyphs at Meydum showed that at the 
beginning of the Fourth Dynasty “ nearly 
all the conventions were already perfected.” 
Representations of the Urxus and the Winged 
Disc, which became so characteristic in later 
days, are found on works of the early dynas- 
ties. From prehistoric days buildings were 


ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 33 


whitened and painted. The interior of the 
tomb at Hieraconpolis had its walls painted 
with ships on the river, and with hunting 
scenes on its banks. The exteriors of crude 
brick buildings were plastered and coloured 
in bands. Such colouring appears on a 
fourth-dynasty ‘‘ false door”? in the British 
Museum. 


CHAPTER III 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS—TOMBS, PYRAMIDS, 
OBELISKS, TEMPLES, HOUSES, TOWNS 


As Egyptian architecture matured, the 
people, or rather their rulers, more and more 
magnified the tombs where they were to lie 
and to be worshipped after their death. The 
art which had been developed joyously 
was too soon imprisoned by ritual rigidity 
and frozen by a dead hand. I remember 
a drawing of an archeologist turning away 
from the Great Pyramid with the remark, 
“It’s too late,’”’ and, indeed, these colossal 
works seem to have crushed the fresh life 
out of the people. Before the pyramids were 
built the tombs had become large and 
splendid. Each contained a strongly con- 
structed tomb-chamber, hidden in the midst 
of a great mass of brickwork, often upwards 
of 200 feet long, sometimes 300 feet long and 
150 feet wide. 

The finest tombs of this—the mastaba—type 
were explored at Meydum, first by Mariette, 
and then, more carefully, by Prof. Petrie. 


The tomb of Nefermatt had its walls covered 
34 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 35 


with scenes and hieroglyphics, which were 
carved into the stones and then filled level 
with coloured mastics, so that all the detail 
appears as in a painting. One of the stones, 
on which a flying duck is wonderfully ren- 
dered, is in the British Museum, and at 
South Kensington are fragments of paintings, 
also a full-sized copy of six geese, which are 
strangely like a fine Japanese drawing. (See 
the woodcut in Loftie’s A Ride in Egypt.) 
Near by, in another mastaba of the same age, 
the end of the Third or early years of the 
Fourth Dynasty, were found the two marvel- 
lously life-like statues of Ra-Hotep and his 
wife Nefert, works wonderfully bright and 
sweet which retain the dew of art’s morning. 
It had been the custom to enlarge these 
mastabas by successive thick coatings of 
brickwork, each sloping at a steep angle, 
usually of 4 to 1. It is now well understood 
that the pyramids are practically great 
mastabas, and it is held that the actual stages 
of transformation are left for our instruction 
in the “‘ Stepped Pyramid ” at Sakkara, and 
the curiously built pyramid at Meydum. 
Although a whole library of books on the 
Great Pyramid exists there is no good com- 
plete study of the entire subject, and as these 
are the earliest great architectural monuments 
it will be well to discuss them at some length. 
In the Third Dynasty two or more neighbour- 


36 ARCHITECTURE 


ing mastabas at Sakkara had been buried 
in a great mass which not only enclosed but 
surmounted them, falling back by degrees in 
a series of terraces. This is known as the 
Stepped Pyramid. It is not even square on 
plan, being upwards of forty feet longer in 
one direction than the other. It is a colossal 
mastaba rather than a pyramid, although 
obviously it was the parent of pyramids. 
There is no doubt that it is of earlier date 
than the other pyramids. It is the only one 
which does not face the cardinal points accu- 
rately, being about four and a half degrees out 
in its lines. It was built by a king of the 
Third Dynasty, whose name was many times 
repeated on the jamb and lintel of a doorway 
in the inner chamber. The walls of this 
chamber were covered by small green glazed 
tiles about 2 x 3 inches slightly convex on the 
face. A few of these tiles are in the British 
Museum, and many others, with the stonework 
of the doorway, are in the Berlin Museum. 
The soffit of the doorway is carved into a 
representation of stars; and other fragments 
found suggested that the ceiling of the chamber 
had had similar decoration. This scheme of 
making the ceiling a sky has persisted ever 
since. Similar green tiles have been found 
at early sites, and it is not now doubted that 
this remarkably beautiful chamber really 
belongs to the Third Dynasty. Of similar 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 37 


tiles found at Hieraconpolis, Mr. Quibell 
remarks that “ their position showed beyond 
doubt that they were not later than the Old 
Kingdom.” 

The exterior of this pyramid is built of 
roughly squared stones “ set to the angle of 
the face,” that is, declining inwards. The 
mass is of rubble masonry in a series of coat- 
ings contained by walls nine feet thick of 
the better masonry, which lean inwards at the 
mastaba angle (here 73° 30’). These walls rise 
from the foundation, but each one decreases 
in height the farther it is from the central 
core, so that the several terraces are succes- 
sively about thirty-four feet lower each than 
the other. It is 351°2 feet from east to west, 
and 398°9 from north to south. Perring says, 
‘“‘ the breadth from north to south has appar- 
ently been increased by an additional wall 
on those sides,’? but no evidence for this 
appears. It is now generally agreed that it 
was not designed as a true pyramid. 

A ruined structure at Meydum seems to 
have been the first pyramid proper; it was 
built at the end of the Third Dynasty or by 
the first king of the Fourth. It also was 
built in inclined layers, but it was square and 
was completed by a continuous casing sloping 
from the base to a point. Prof. Petrie in 
his latest study of the subject considers that 
he has found sufficient evidence to show that 


38 ARCHITECTURE 


it was only after several coatings had been 
completed in preparation for finishing: it as 
a stepped structure that a change of scheme 
was made with a view of completing’it as a 
pointed pyramid. Thus the faces of the several 
terrace walls are finely dressed masonry. 
Prof. Petrie discovered: the external sloping 
casing of fine masonry several years ago. In 
his recent re-examination of the base of this 
pyramid he found several of these stones 
marked with a rough sketch of a stepped 
pyramid. This suggests that even when 
these stones for the casing of a true pyramid 
were prepared, the monument where they 
were to be used was known by an ideogram 
representing a ‘‘ stepped pyramid.” 

The method followed at Sakkara and 
Meydum of building in inclined coatings 
seems to be a reasonable one for the erection 
of pyramids proper, for it was followed at 
Abousir and Lisht. The angle made by the 
easing of the completed pyramid of Meydum 
resulted in giving a ratio, between the sum of 
the four sides and the height, of 44 to 7—that 
is, the ratio between the radius and the 
circumference of a circle. The Great Pyramid 
of Gizeh, which followed that of Meydum, 
has exactly the same angle, and Prof. Petrie 
considers that the coincidence with the ratio 
of the radius to the circumference of a circle 
is intentional. That the Great Pyramid has 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 39 


exactly the same angle shows that it was 
copied from the finished work at Meydum, 
but it does not show that there was any 
meaning attached to the ratio of height to 
base. 

The simplest supposition would be that 
the angle was given by considering the 
general slope which would include the several 
terraces with just a little adjustment to allow 
of the use of whole numbers, as seven of height 
to eleven of base. The tendency of pyramid 
design seems to have been to attain height, to 
build a structure that should reach to heaven. 
At Sakkara terrace was piled on terrace, at 
Meydum and the Great Pyramid the finished 
angle was nearly 52°. The ideal pyramid, 
as depicted in the hieroglyphs, was very 
acute from the earliest time. Obviously, in 
a progression from the pyramid of Sakkara 
to the Second Pyramid at Gizeh, which rises 
at an angle of over 53°, the angle giving 
the ratio of the radius to the circumference 
of a circle was reached accidentally. The 
general angle of the Sakkara pyramid, which 
would include the terraces, is about 49°; 
Meydum and the Great Pyramid, 51° 52’; 
the Second Pyramid, 53° 10’; Dahsur, steep 
part at bottom, 55°, flatter part at top, 45°. 

Again, it would have been curious to make 
this particular ratio subsist between the 
height and the square measure round about 


40 ARCHITECTURE 


the base; it would have been a more striking 
coincidence if the correspondence had been 
with the inscribed or circumscribed circles of 
the base—that is, there are three chances for 
those who would find just this ratio in the 
pyramid. If we consider all the chances of 
relation between the half base, the base, the 
diagonal base, the vertical height, the slope 
height, the diagonal height, we should prob- 
ably be justified in assuming that this 
particular ratio is fortuitous. 

Given the two conditions of desine for great 
size and for the utmost durability, the pyra- 
mid form was the most perfect solution - 
possible. 

The Great Pyramid at Gizeh, named ‘“ the 
glory of Khufu,” “the greatest and most 
accurate structure ever built,” is about 480 feet 
high and seems more like a hill of stone, rising 
as it does from a base of over thirteen acres, 
than like an architectural work. When it 
was new and sharp it must have gleamed 
cold and white like the peak of an alp rising 
above the burning golden sand. Some casing 
stones were found around the base by Howard 
Vyse. They were large blocks, the one of 
which he gives the dimensions being 4 feet 
11 inches high, 8 feet 3 inches on the bed, 
and 4 feet 3 inches on the top from back. to 
front, showing 6 feet 3 inches on the slanting 
face. Ofthese stones there are some fragments 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 41 


at the British Museum. The pyramids stood 
within large square paved courts, surrounded 
by walls, and each one had a temple attached 
to it on the east side, where offerings were 
made to the dead Pharaoh. 

The effort required for the erection of such 
works seems incredible. According to Hero- 
dotus an inscription on the Great Pyramid 
told that 16,000 talents had been spent on the 
radishes, onions and garlic eaten by the work- 
men. This must be an example of the 
myth of cost, and is, indeed, explained by his 
own comment, ‘“‘If this be so, how much 
besides,” ete. A similar story is told of Rome: 
Heliogabalus, it is said, gathered and weighed 
all the cobwebs in the city, so that its size 
might thus be inferred. 

Another myth concerning construction is 
accepted by many writers, including Perrot 
and Maspero. The sloping casing, they say, 
was begun by setting the apex stone and con- 
tinuing thence downwards. It surely would 
be a useless miracle to handle such big stones 
in such a way. Choisy minimizes the story 
to mean that the casing was fixed as square 
blocks, and dressed to the slope afterwards, 
but Howard Vyse long ago pointed out that 
the casing was fixed “‘roughly cut to the 
proper angle,”’ and that the fine dressing only 
was executed in place, as cleaning-off; and 
this view has been confirmed by Prof. Petrie. 


A2 ARCHITECTURE 


It would have served just as well for con- 
venience to leave the casing blocks square 
on one side only, or, indeed, to have left such 
a step-way, say twenty feet wide, up one side. 
We may suppose, then, that one or two per 
cent. of the casing was left up in steps 
temporarily on the side facing the road by 
which the casing-stones arrived. 

The final dressing to a fair plane surface 
seems to have been done with the assistance 
of some scaffolding. Perring says that at 
Dahsur there were “ puttock holes” in the 
casing-stones for supports used when the 
dressing-off was done, and the holes had been 
very neatly filled up with inserted blocks. 
Many of the lower stones in this pyramid 
were, he found, joined together by stone 
dovetails. The analysis of pyramid con- 
struction as given by Choisy is most suggestive. 
Although it is only a sketch, it indicates how 
these man-made hills had to be built. 

At the north pyramid at Dahsur Perring 
found the apex stone (the slope was 45°). It 
was of one block 4 feet 9 inches high. The 
course beneath was of four stones of the same 
height, the other courses were less. 

A pyramid was not a solitary monument— 
it was supported, like a cathedral, by many 
subsidiary buildings and rose within a paved 
enclosure; round about was a whole necro- 
polis of mastabas_ A college of priests was 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 43 


attached to its service, supported by an endow- 
ment of lands. The Great Pyramid and its 
two companions at Gizeh were built within 
a century and probably by one family— 
a father, son, and the latter’s grandson. 
According to Maspero, the lower rock-hewn 
chamber below the Great Pyramid belongs 
to an earlier tomb which is embedded in the 
superstructure. It has been much discussed 
whether this pyramid was built according to 
a first design or whether it was enlarged by 
successive works. Dr. Borchardt, the archi- 
tect to the German mission, gives evidence 
to show that it was altered and enlarged. 
“A recent campaign of excavation by Ger- 
mans, Americans and Italians at the pyramid 
area has resulted in showing that besides the 
temples directly to the east of the several 
pyramids there were others in the valley near 
the causeways leading up to the pyramids. 
The granite temple close to the Sphinx 
belonged to the pyramid of Chephren. Prof. 
Petrie long ago showed that it was built in 
connection with the causeway, and was the 
work of Chephren. The interior was lined 
with red granite. The exterior was a square 
mass, the walls channelled into * false doors ”’ 
and with a paved terrace roof. The Third 
Pyramid had a similar second temple, which 
had never been completed. In its ruins were 
found magnificent statues of Mycerinus. It 


AA, ARCHITECTURE 


is most probable that the Great Sphinx, which 
is close to the lower temple of the Second 
Pyramid, at the side of the causeway leading 
to it, was sculptured out of the rock as the 
guardian of the sacred precinct. It is a lion 
with the head of King Chephren. The road- 
way has paving which is cut into the rock; 
it doubtless continued to a water-gate on the 
bank of the Nile. 

At Abousir a German expedition has 
recently carefully explored a group of fifth- 
dynasty pyramids. They are of great im- 
portance, for the temples and_ subsidiary 
buildings were well preserved, together with 
long covered passages which led up from 
water-gates. In the Berlin Museum there is 
an admirable restored model of these. The 
water-gates were noble works with columnar 
fronts like Greek propylea. 

A long series of discoveries has demon- 
strated how the primitive grave developed 
into the mastaba, how the mastaba grew 
very large and became transformed into a 
step-pyramid, and how that passed almost 
accidentally yet inevitably into the true 
pyramid, a perfect final form. Such acciden- 
tal development leading to such an ordered 
end has ever been the law of architectural 
growth; nothing of true worth has ever been 
invented of malice prepense. Evolution was 
along the line of increasing bulk and the 


P) 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 45 


effort after durability ; these produced the 
yramid. 

Within these enormous masses were only 
one or two small chambers, one of which con- 
tained the sarcophagus. They were reached 
by passages planned in a strange way and 
defended, so that the sepulchral chamber 
should be inaccessible. The pyramid of 
Meydum was penetrated by a passage sloping 
down from the north side; beneath the centre 
of the work it reached the bottom of a vertical 
shaft, which thence ascended to the floor of 
the tomb. The external opening in the side 
of the pyramid was probably closed by wedged 
stones. 

At the Great Pyramid the entrance was in 
the eighteenth course on the north side. From 
it a passage descended into a chamber cut 
in the rock. That seemed to be all, except 
that about sixty feet from the entrance there 
was a great block of granite showing in the 
ceiling of the passage. It was too hard to be 
cut through, but the old pyramid-breakers 
mined a way by the side of it into an ascending 
passage. At the upper end other obstructions 
barred the way, for the tomb-chamber was 
cut off from the passage by four heavy blocks 
which had been suspended in suitable cavities. 
When the original workmen withdrew they 
removed the props and the blocks fell like 
portcullises. Choisy suggests that in so 


46 ARCHITECTURE 


dealing with great stones the craftmasters 
used sandbags, which, slowly giving out their 
contents, allowed the stones to fall into their 
_place gently. In the pyramid of Dahsur the 
cavity for the portcullis rose obliquely at the 
side, so that the massive sealing stone slid 
down the incline and closed the passage, as 
was clearly explained by Perring in the 
standard English work on the pyramids. 
Here the outer end of the passage was closed 
by a block adjusted on pivots. The entrance 
was so well concealed on the exterior “ as to 
have escaped the closest examination.” 

One of the mysteries of these buildings 
is why there was all this complexity of con- 
trivance, why the passages were not merely 
regarded as temporary ways to be built up 
solid. Prof. Petrie has suggested that the 
passages remained accessible to the priests, 
but if so, why was the fine ascending passage 
of the Great Pyramid cut off? Is it not 
probable that the endeavour was to confuse 
evil spirits? In any case the problem is 
one which is inherently fascinating, especially 
to young minds—the mystery of the secret 
chamber. Such _ preoccupations probably 
gave birth to the idea of the labyrinth, which 
as a device appears on Egyptian scarabs. 
Prof. Petrie has lately published a small 
ivory tablet of the Twelfth Dynasty on which 
a labyrinth is rudely incised. 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS AT 


The twelfth-dynasty pyramid of Ilahun 
had its entrance in a well forty feet deep, from 
which a passage hewn in the rock led to a 
chamber from which access was gained to 
another chamber of red granite, from the 
north wall of which “a strange passage is 
cut in the rock, first northward, then west, 
then south, then east, and lastly northwards 
again, opening into the limestone chamber.” 
It passed right round the granite chamber 
and looked as if it were intended to prove that 
there was no other passage. 

The interior of the pyramid of Hawara 
(Twelfth Dynasty) is described as elaborately 
arranged so as to deceive and weary the 
spoiler. The mouth was on the ground level 
on the south side, a quarter of the length from 
the south-west corner. ‘‘ The original ex- 
plorers descended a passage with steps to a 
chamber from which apparently there was no 
exit. The way consisted of a sliding trap-door, 
however, and breaking through this, another 
chamber was reached at a higher level. Then 
a passage opened to the east closed only with 
a wooden door, and leading to another chamber 
with a trap-door roof. But in front of the 
explorers was a passage carefully plugged up 
solid with stone; this they thought would 
lead to the prize, and so all the stones were 
mined through, only to lead to nothing. 
From the second trap-door chamber a passage 


48 ARCHITECTURE 


led northward to yet a third such chamber. 
From that a passage led west to a chamber 
’ with two wells, which seemed as though they 
led to the tomb, but both were false. This 
chamber also was almost filled with masonry, 
which all concealed nothing, but had given 
plenty of occupation to the spoilers who 
removed it in vain. A filled-up trench in the 
floor really led to the sepulchre; but arriving 
there no door was to be found, as the entrance 
had been by the roof, an enormous block of 
which had been let down into place to close 
the chamber. So at last the way had been 
forced by breaking away a hole in the edge 
of the glass-hard sandstone roofing-block 
and thus reaching the chamber and _ its 
sarcophagi.”’ Prof. Petrie exhibited this year 
(1911) a model of a tomb with such small 
winding passages, and traps, that he had 
indicated the true way by a thread, taking 
a hint from the story of Ariadne. 

Obelisks are almost as mysterious as 
pyramids. The early shrines shown on objects 
of the first dynasties often have pairs of masts 
or posts standing before their fronts, and the 
proper function of obelisks is to stand in 
pairs before the great eastern gates of the 
temples. Small obelisks have been found in 
tombs of the Old Kingdom, but the earliest 
of the existing great obelisks belongs to the 
Twelfth Dynasty. In the design of the typical 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 49 


obelisk there has evidently been some borrow- 
ing from the pyramid; it is an immensely 
tall, double-angled pyramid of one stone. 
In the obelisk is embodied another structural 
ideal, the delight in balance. The noble 
materials which the Egyptian architects con- 
trolled made it possible to set up obelisks 
over 100 feet high. Their apices were fre- 
quently covered with gilt copper, or they were 
entirely gilt so as to flash in the sun. They 
may have been boundary stones in origin, 
but they came to have some symbolic relation 
with the sun. They are perfected monoliths, 
in part the outcome of an _ ineradicable 
tendency to worship big stones which has 
always been one of the forces at work in 
Architecture. 

In Egypt from the’earliest time it had been 
customary to bury gifts with the dead and 
to make offerings at their tombs. In the 
pyramid age the service of the royal tombs 
was regularly endowed and each pyramid had 
a temple attached to it. The gods had 
shrines from the first dynasties or even earlier. 
In the British Museum is the inscribed part 
of the fourth-dynasty tomb of a priest of the 
gods Seker and Tet and overseer of the works 
in the palaces and temples. Foundations of 
a temple of the first dynasties have been 
discovered at Abydos. 


The remains recently explored at Hiera- 
D 


50 ARCHITECTURE — 


conpolis of a temple built over an earlier 
stone-faced mound suggests that the primitive 
holy places were shrines set on platforms 
in enclosures. The fifth-dynasty temple of 
the sun at Abousir had a huge stunted obelisk 
set on the top of an almost cubical platform, 
the whole enclosed in a court. The fifth- 
dynasty pyramid temples at Abousir are 
highly developed with courts and colonnades. 
A column from the fifth-dynasty temple of 
Unas .is in the British Museum (fig. 11). 
Considerable remains of the temple built by 
Pepi in the Sixth Dynasty show that it was 
about 50 x 40 feet, with colonnades and stone 
gateways. Thus the temple proper had been 
developed under the Old Kingdom. 

Temples of the Eleventh Dynasty have 
lately been explored at Thebes and Deir-el- 
Bahri. 

The better-known temples belong to the 
Eighteenth Dynasty; they were usually of 
great size and complexity, and consisted of a 
far withdrawn holy place, small and obscure, 
approached through a succession of large 
courts and columned halls, some open and 
others covered by platform ceilings of stone 
slabs, all arranged on a central axis which 
pointed to the sunrise. Before the outer gates 
were Obelisks and avenues of statues. 

Within all the wall-surfaces were covered 
by relief sculptures and paintings, which 


EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 51 


followed a traditional arrangement suggesting 
a correspondence between the local habitation 
of the deity and the universe of which it was 
in some way the image. 

The temple, says Maspero (1907), ‘‘ was 
built in the image of the earth such as the 
Egyptians had imagined. The earth was for 
them a sort of flat slab more long than wide, 
the sky was a ceiling or vault supported by 
four great pillars. The pavement of the 
temples represented the earth, the four 
angles stood for the pillars, the ceiling, 
vaulted at Abydos, or more often flat, corre- 
sponded to the sky.”’ 

Each point received an appropriate decora- 
tion; from the pavement grew vegetation, 
and water plants emerged from _ water. 
Thothmes III had carved the herbs and beasts 
of the foreign lands which he had conquered. 
The ceiling, painted in dark blue, was strewn 
with stars of five points. Sometimes, the sun 
and moon were seen floating on the heavenly 
ocean escorted by the constellations, and the 
months and days. “ The ornamentation was 
restricted to a small number of subjects, 
always the same.” 

The palaces were much lighter structures 
than the temples, and for the most part were 
built of brick and wood. With their courts, 
gardens, ponds, and dependent buildings they 
were enclosed within strong walls. The 


LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


52 ARCHITECTURE 


ceilings, walls, and plastered floors were gaily 
painted with patterns or scenes. ‘The houses 
had frequently two or three stories of rooms 
having windows of quite modern form. See 
a model of a house in the British Museum 
with a window divided by a little column, 
and another with two-light windows divided 
by transoms. 

From pre-dynastic time Egyptian towns 
were built within strong walls, forming a 
square or parallelogram with defensive walk 
and battlements above. At Ilahun, Prof. 
Petrie excavated “an unaltered town of the 
Twelfth Dynasty.’’ It was square and walled 
and with regular streets. The larger houses 
had a court surrounded by columns with a 
water-tank in the middle, 


CHAPTER IV 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING—METHODS AND IDEAS 


BEsIpDES the better-known pyramids aiid 
temples built of large blocks of stone, the 
larger number of common buildings in Egypt 
were constructed of mud brick and some 
poor and scarce timber. Vaults and arches 
are found in Egypt dating from the beginnings 
of dynastic rule, and rudimentary domes are 
probably as old. They are both primitive. 
The arch, as described in books, 1s an assem- 
blage of large stone wedges put together 
without cement, remaining stable by the 
balance of parts. The arch was not so intro- 
duced into architecture. At the simplest, an 
arch is the upper part of a horizontal excava- 
tion in a mass of clay or gravel—a swift’s hole 
in a sand bank, for instance.- If the opening 
be gradually diminished upwards by slanting 
or rounding, and if the material is fairly com- 
pact, quite a big hole may be made without 
the mass falling in. In the simplest building, 
a vault is a convex shell of dried clay span- 
ning an open space, by gradually bringing 
together a rounded continuation of the walls. 

53 


54 ARCHITECTURE 


In building by an aggregation of material like 
mud, it seems to be quite natural to bring the 
side-walls together into the form of vaults. 
Such an “ arch ”’ has the properties of a bent 
beam—it is strong until it breaks up into 
sections; and every modern arch, so far as it 
is made homogeneous by cement is in a sense 
a bent beam—that is, the wedges do not act 
separately. 

About ten years ago there was an interesting 
paper on primitive mud architecture in the 
Journal of the Geographical Society. Even 
the Prairie dogs build little domed structures 
and the Esquimaux construct domes of ice. 
When the use of mud-walling gave place to 
building with sun-dried bricks—that is, to mud 
which had been divided up into sections—it 
was easily seen that the continuous clay shell- 
vault might be successfully imitated in bricks. 
A man beginning a clay shell would do so 
against an end wall to which his first hand- 
fuls would be made to adhere while gradually 
rising from the sides. So the builder of 
brick vaults in Egypt and Assyria began at 
the end by slanting courses up from the sides 
so that they leaned against the end wall; 
each brick was laid flatwise on the slanting 
face left by the last course; it was stuck to 
it, as it were, by its broad surface. Thus the 
vault was brought along from the end without 


any ‘“‘centring’”’ by making each thin cake © 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 55 


of mud adhere to and rest against the slanting 
course last done. There was no thought of 
wedges, the vault was thought of as a con- 
tinuous convex shell, although it was executed 
by assembling cakes of mud of a uniform size. 
The Romans developed this idea of the homo- 
geneous vault in their magnificent concrete 
construction. 

The wedge arch might have had an inde- 
pendent origin, for children playing with 
stones seem naturally to make experiments in 
bridging over voids; === 
but the true arch 
of masonry appears 
late, and it seems to 
have been evolved in 
Kgypt after the brick 
vault had been built for some two thousand 
years. 

Prof. Flinders Petrie describes a tomb de- 
pendent on a fine first-dynasty mastaba at 
Gizeh as vaulted, and Prof. Garstang has 
excavated a number of vaulted tombs at 
Reququah which he assigns to the Third 
Dynasty. These tombs were small oblongs, 
sunk in the ground; the sides had walls, and 
they were covered by vaults in which the 
bricks were placed edgeways and leaning 
back at an angle against the end wall of the 
tomb. Sometimes the bricks were roughly 
cut to more or less of a wedge shape, and some 





56 ARCHITECTURE 


of the arches are rudely pointed (fig. 12). 
Stone-roofed passages of the Fourth Dynasty 
were at times hollowed out into the arch form, 
which shows how deeply by this time it must 
have got into consciousness. 

At the twelfth-dynasty town of the builders 
of the pyramid of Ilahun, Prof. Petrie found 
many arched roofs of brickwork, and the 
doorways were always arched. 

Small circular ‘‘ domed ”’ structures of mud 
were probably known from the earliest time 
in Egypt. At Hieraconpolis several ‘‘ shuna,” 
or store-pits, of about six feet in diameter 
have been found which seemed to have be- 
longed to houses of the pre-pyramid age. 
Some foundations of isolated circular buildings, 
probably granaries, were also discovered. In 
the Twelfth Dynasty domes were formed 
over the circular chambers within the small 
pyramids of this age. They are built of hori- 
zontal layers of brickwork, each course being 
of less diameter than the one below. They 
resemble the beehive tomb at Mycene, and, 
as Choisy remarked, “‘ their likeness to pre- 
Hellenic domes cannot be fortuitous.” The 
same author, judging from the paintings, 
thought it probable that the Egyptians 
covered square chambers with mud domes, 
which showed externally. This view is con- 
firmed by some models of houses of the 
Tenth Dynasty found at Rifeh, which show 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 57 


several varieties of vaulting; in some “the 
domed roofs are obvious.’”? One model shows 
a terrace-roof with three little rounded cupolas 
just emerging through it, like a modern 
Kastern house (fig. 13). 

The use of rude little domes for granaries 
was quite general. According to Perrot and 
Chipiez, “‘the granaries and store-houses were 
almost always dome-shaped ... asketch made 
in a tomb at Sakkara shows another form of 
granary shaped like a stone bottle ”—that 
is, it had a sort of knob above the “* dome”’; 
these knobs are prob- 
ably the far-off 
originals of lanterns 
on domes. It should 
be noticed that these 
granary domes were not spherical, but semi- 
eggshaped. 

At Daphne Prof. Petrie explored the ruins 
of a fortress-palace built about 660 B.c. All 
that remained was a square mass of brickwork 
about 160 feet square; the interior was an 
irregular “‘ gridiron ”’ of thick walls, forming 
cells about ten to sixteen feet wide. Many 
were square, others were oblong; the latter 
formed ‘“‘ deep domed chambers or cells, which 
were opened from the top.”’ They were much 
ruined, but several cells “‘ in the best-preserved 
parts showed signs of the springing of domes 
in their corners; the corners are rounded and 





58 ARCHITECTURE 


gather in towards the vaulting.” In answer 
to an inquiry, Prof. Petrie was kind enough 
to tell me further : “‘ Egyptian doming of con- 
struction chambers is irregular, the sides 
contracting inwards while the corner increas- 
ingly rounds. For open chambers, I think 
the angles in each case are truncated by 
placing bricks across them.’’ We have here 
the application of domes to square chambers 
systematically by means of gradually re- 
ducing the angles. However imperfectly 
they may have been executed, this is the 
system of the “ pendentive.” 

Structures of crude brick were mud- 
plastered to protect them from the weather, 
and whitewashed and painted in stripes and 
simple patterns from the earliest days. Even 
some of the pyramids are built of mud brick 
eased in stone, that at Illahun has a frame- 
work of stone walling filled in with crude 
brick. In the Nineteenth Dynasty some. 
works were executed in baked brick, but it 
was not in common use till Hellenistic days. 
The baking of clay was, of course, taken 
over from pottery. Some bricks enamelled a 
lovely blue have been found. 

Masonry of all kinds, from rubble to fine 
ashlar in large blocks, was in use. It was 
bedded in plaster, or in a mortar of plaster, 
sand, and pounded brick. The masonry of 
the third-dynasty pyramid at Sakkara is set 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 59 


in mortar. Fine masonry blocks from about 
the Twelfth Dynasty were linked by dove- 
tailed cramps of stone or wood, or by metal 
cramps. 

A curious manner of bedding masonry and 
brickwork in undulating courses is frequently 
found. The masonry at the pyramid of 
Sakkara rises towards the angles. Doubtless, 
the custom arose, as explained by Choisy, 
through building walls with strongly battered 
faces the beds of which sloped inwards; this 
made a difficulty of bonding at the corners 
which the tilting of the angles went far to 
obviate. 

Other applications of the method are hard 
to understand. It was the custom in the 
Twelfth Dynasty to build walls in a corrugated 
form; thus they got elasticity and stiffness. 
The walls of the fortress of El] Kab were built 
in this way on the west and north sides; on the 
east and south the walls were built in sectional 
lengths with vertical “straight joints” at 
intervals. These sections were bedded hori- 
zontally and in concave curves alternately. 
The breaking of the wall into sections allowed 
of contraction and expansion under the violent 
changes of temperature, and possibly the 
undulations contributed to the same end; 
where a wall was built on a slope, it was a 
provision against sliding. 

Egyptian masonry was wrought at times 


60 ARCHITECTURE 


with astonishing technical ability. Hard stones 
like granite, basalt, and diorite were cut by 
means of long saws. Howard Vyse noticed 
that the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyra- 
mid had been cut by a saw. The tubular 
drill was also much used, and dishes and bowls 
of diorite were turned. 

One ideal of the builders was the use of 
fine material, and the conquering of intractable 
substances; another was accuracy of work- 
manship. 

Already when the pyramid of Meydum was 
built, the idea of accuracy had been carried 
so far that the bedding of the stones around 
the base varied in level only about a quar- 
ter of an inch in the 2000 feet; the joints 
are “‘ under ;3,th of aninch.’”’ The stones were 
finished by the strokes of a small adze. ‘“* The 
laying out of the base of the pyramid of Khufu 
is a triumph of skill; its errors both in length 
and in its angles could be covered by placing 
one’s thumb on them—the casing stones are 
so truly square that the film of mortar left 
between them is on an average not thicker 
than one’s thumb-nail.”” The sepulchral 
chamber, of the twelfth-dynasty pyramid of 
Hawara was ‘“‘a marvellous work ’’; it re- 
sembled a huge tank cut out of a single block 
of a hard quartzite sandstone, the internal size 
was 22 x 8 feet, and 3 feet of stone were left 
all round. The corners were so sharply cut that 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 61 


at first it seemed that they must have been 
jointed; the whole “glassy hard ’’ surface 
was polished. It was covered in by separate 
blocks. 

Prof. Petrie considers that plane surfaces 
were tested by bringing them into contact 
withatrue plane. Of the pyramid of Meydum 
he says: “On the stones may be seen the red 
spots of paint left from the testing by a red- 
dened trial-plate as on the stones of Khufu, 
at Gizeh.”? This became the Greek method 
of “the red canon.”’ Such accuracy of work- 
manship is astonishing, and it must depend 
on some underlying idea which the builders 
sought to realize. 

A further development in ideas of per- 
fection is found in orientation—the feeling 
that the earthly building should be put into 
relation with its heavenly prototype the 
world-temple. The pyramid at Meydum 
fairly corresponds with the four aspects, and 
the Great Pyramids of Gizeh are almost per- 
fectly adjusted. 

In later Egyptian inscriptions relating to 
buildings, phrases often occur like “it is 
such as the heaven in all its quarters ”’; “* firm 
as the heavens.’ The idea must have been 
that as the heavens were stable, not to be 
moved, so the building put into proper rela- 
tion with the universe would acquire a magical 
stability. It is recorded that when Akhnaton 


62 ARCHITECTURE 


founded his new city, four boundary stones 
were accurately placed, so that it should be 
exactly square. 

Minutely careful measurements have demon- 
strated that the Egyptians worked according 
to schemes of proportion, as part of these 
ideas for perfect building. A mastaba of the 
Third or Fourth Dynasty at Meydum has a 
breadth of 100 and a length of 200 cubits. 
Here lines 20°6 inches apart showed exactly 
what the cubit was. The slope was an angle 
of 4 to 1. Accuracy of form was so much 
desired that walls of L form were built out- 
side each corner and on these the slope of the 
tomb was carefully marked with a red line. 
Both the pyramid at Meydum and the 
Great Pyramids at Gizeh had such a form 
that the vertical height compared with the 
measute round about the four sides was, as 
we have seen, as 7 to 44. 

Here and elsewhere, the several dimensions 
of a work were set out with a big standard of 
measure so as to avoid fractional parts. This, 
indeed, seems to have been the substance of 
the idea: the parts were to be of known 
dimensions; there were to be no accidental 
quantities. “The dimensions of the pyra- 
mid of Meydum are 7 and 44 times a length 
of 25 cubits. Those of Khufu are 7 and 44 
times a length of 40 cubits.”” That is, one 
was set out so that all the dimensions were 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 63 


multiples of 25 cubits, and the other so 
that all were multiples of 40 cubits. At 
Dahsur the pyramid was designed on an even 
number of cubits, the base being 360 cubits, 
and the height 200, while the space walled 
in around it was 100 cubits wide. Another 
smaller pyramid near by had a base 100 cubits 
square. 

In the twelfth-dynasty pyramid at Ilahun 
was a beautifully worked granite sarcopha- 
gus of great “‘ accuracy of proportion,” each 
dimension being a whole number of palms, 
with an error of not more than one part in a 
thousand. 

These results, worked out by actual 
measurement, coincide exactly with what is 
reported to us of Greek ideas of proportion— 
ideas based on the feeling that an object to be 
perfect must have all its dimensions related 
according to some scheme of simple measure- 
ment which avoids fractional parts. The 
- builders, it is clear, had before them some 
idea of perfection, and endeavoured to realize 
a type which should rise above the accidental. 
In the Old Testament we find other examples 
of a similar mode of thought, both in the 
descriptions of the Tabernacle and of Ezekiel’s 
temple. Modern Indian craftsmen seem to 
work according to the same tradition. 

Perrot gives an interesting example of a 
builder’s adjustment to disguise irregularity. 


64 ARCHITECTURE 


The two obelisks before the temple at Luxor 
were of different heights owing to some acci- 
dent; one is 85 feet high, the other 78 feet. 
‘To hide this difference they were set upon 
unequal bases, and the shorter obelisk was 
placed slightly in advance of the other.” 
Such simple modifications show great mastery 
over effects which modern people find it 
very difficult to apply. A little humouring 
of this sort would have made Watts’ fine 
statue in Kensington Gardens seem to stand 
at the centre of the radiating paths, but the 
problem was beyond our powers. 

It is said that some of the obelisks have 
slightly curved instead of plane surfaces, 
and that lines in the plans of some of the 
temples are laid out in a just perceptible 
curve. | 

This pursuit of the ideal and the typical 
must have been related to the dominating 
desire for permanence. The inscriptions of the 
Pharaohs boast of their having founded 
‘‘ everlasting stone monuments,”’ in honour of 
the gods. 

Egyptian sculpture early matured, the 
most perfect age was at the end of the Third 
Dynasty and the beginning of the Fourth. 
The famous scribe and the more beautiful 
portraits of Rahotep and the lady Nefert are 
of this time. Quite recently some magnifi- 
cent portrait statues of the pyramid age have 


EGYPTIAN BUILDING 65 


been found in the temple of the Third Pyramid. 
Some wonderful bronze statues of the Old 
Kingdom have been discovered at Hiera- 
conpolis. Besides sculptures in the round, 
the Egyptians practised relief sculpture of 
exquisite delicacy, and the method of intaglio 
relief which was so suitable under the devour- 
ing sunshine. 

Architectural painting did not consist only 
of the well-known friezes of battles and 
offerings, but many are of domestic and 
pastoral scenes, dancing and hunting pieces, 
animals and, birds. The most remarkable 
are the well-known friezes of ducks of the 
pyramid age; the painted plaster pavement 
from Tel el Amarna of calves skipping amongst 
vegetation; and the ceiling from the palace 
of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 B.c.) of grey doves 
and red butterflies, flying across a pale-blue 
sky. 

Besides painting and sculpture, many sorts 
of surface decoration were practised, such as 
polishing, gilding, the inlaying of wood with 
ivory, and of stone with bright-coloured 
faience. Casings of bright-green tiles were 
applied to walls in the first dynasties. At 
Abydos some tiles with figures in relief have 
been found which probably adorned a chamber 
of the time of Menes. 

It is a part of my intention to try to point 


out what contributions were made to uni- 
E 


66 ARCHITECTURE 


yersal architecture by the several civilizations 
as they arose and passed away, but to do so 
of Egypt would be to practically re-write 
what has been said: to a large degree 
Architecture is an Egyptian art. 


CHAPTER V 


BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN 
ASIA AND EUROPE 


Two other schools of architecture—the 
earliest Asiatic style and the earliest European 
style—must also be considered, although less 
fully. Egypt, Babylonia and Crete were 
three centres of early civilization, representing 
Africa, Asia and Europe, which from an 
early period and for long acted upon one 
another. 

Little or nothing is known of a primitive 
age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the 
art of Babylonia was that of a civilized 
people. As has been said, there is great 
similarity between this art and that of early 
dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears 
that Egypt borrowed of Asia, rather than the 
reverse. If the origins of art in Babylonia were 
as fully known as those in Egypt, the story 
of architecture might have to begin in Asia 
instead of Egypt. The best general account 
of Babylonian art has been written by Perrot 
and Chipiez. A good English account of 


recent discoveries in western Asia was given 
67 


68 ARCHITECTURE 


by Messrs. King and Hall in 1907. Written 
records seem to take us back to about 4000 B.c. 
Some writers think that metal tools were first 
used in Elam; if this was so it would give 
western Asia a strong claim to be the mother- 
land of the arts. 

A record of great interest only lately de- 
ciphered describes how King Gudea (c. 2700) 
rebuilt the temple of a high god and trans- 
lated his image to it from a yet older temple. 
The new building is described as being like 
a mountain, terrible and strong as a bull. 
The doors were guarded by statues of heroes 
and monsters, and facing the rising sun the 
emblem of the Sun-god was set up. Within 
was a stone tank for water. The temple was 
surrounded by dependent buildings in an en- 
closed paradise, where trees and flowers grew 
around a large lead-lined tank. Here the 
birds flew unmolested. The plan of the temple 
had been drawn by one of the gods on a tablet 
of lapis-lazuli and revealed to the king. On 
the appointed day, at the first sight of dawn, 
the great god and goddess entered their new 
temple, “* like a whirlwind, like the rising sun.” 
Messrs. King and Hall speak of it as having 
been an immense building with numerous 
shrines and courts, and a high giggsurat, or 
temple tower, of several stories, each de- 
creasing, one above the other. The little 
light that entered the interior through the 





BABYLONIA AND CRETE 69 


doorway would have been reflected in the 
basin of sacred water sunk level with the 
floor. The area covered by the buildings 
‘* must have been enormous.” They included 
dwellings for the priests, shelters for the 
sacrificial animals, treasuries, and store-houses 
for the produce of the temple lands. It was 
evidently a great establishment; a temple of 
cathedral rank, not a mere shrine or chamber 
of offerings. The emblem of the Sun facing 
the east, and the entry of the god to his temple 
like the rising sun at dawn, shows that already 
this temple was built in correspondence with 
the greater world-temple. 

If temples were thus highly developed at 
this early time in Babylonia, it seems possible 
that temples of the gods first appeared in 
western Asia, and from thence spread to Egypt 
and other countries. 

At Nippur remains of an altar and of a 
massive brick building in which was an arch 
have been found which belong to an age 
earlier than the reign of Sargon I,. which is 
put at about 3800 B.c. Aninscribed tablet of 
this early age lately found at Telloh records 
the capture of a city and the burning of several 
temples, “‘ carrying away the silver and preci- 
ous stones therefrom,’ and destroying the 
statues. It would appear that Babylonia 
was a land of temples when Egypt was a land 
of tombs. 


70 ARCHITECTURE 


The results of the excavations carried on 
for a dozen years by a German expedition at 
the mounds of Babylon have just been pub- 
lished by Prof. R. Koldewey. Four temples 
were explored. They were of brick, and 
consisted of a number of chambers sur- 
rounding a great court which was entered 
through towered gateways. The gates had 
bronze pivots turning in stone sockets. The 
courts were paved with brick covered with 
asphalt. The chief chamber or cella gave 
evidence that here had been an image of the 
goddess. In another temple there were three 
parallel halls opening to the courtyard, the 
central one being that of the god, while another 
one was occupied by his consort. 

The temple of Marduk (Baal), attached 
to the Tower of Babel, was of great size. 
The enclosing wall had a number of towers 
channelled into vertical grooves, which were 
as characteristic of Babylonian architecture as 
of early Egyptian. The chief chamber here 
contained a figure of the god seated on a 
throne. The great tower was a solid brick 
mass, square in places, but there was no evi- 
dence to show how the upper part had been 
formed. 

The Germans have also excavated Assur, 
the oldest city of Assyria. Enormous walls, 
city-gates and palaces were explored, as well 
as the Temple of Assur, which dated from 


BABYLONIA AND CRETE 71 


the ninth century B.c. The results have 
been published by Dr. Andrae. Here again 
the temple consisted of a court surrounded by 
a row of many chambers, combined into one 
enclosing wall. It was entered by a great 
gate, and opposite were large cells between 
two stepped towers or ziggurats. 

The palace of Nebuchadnezzar (sixth 
century) has also been recently uncovered. 
It was a huge “castle” with innumerable 
courts, halls and chambers. The side walls 
of the paved way which led up to it were 
decorated with big and splendid figures of 
lions made up of coloured glazed tiles. 

The chambers in the temples and palaces 
were all probably covered by vaults. Layard 
found one vaulted chamber entire in the thick- 
ness of a great wall. Arched drains and 
evidence for barrel-vaulted gateways have 
been discovered, and Loftus describes many 
graves covered by vaults where the thin bricks 
were set “‘on edge,”’ and leaned back at an 
angle in the typical Eastern manner. Flandin 
and Loftus thought that there was sufficient 
evidence to show that the apartments of the 
palaces had also been vaulted. Arches fre- 
quently appear on the Assyrian slabs; on one 
of the slabs is represented a group of domes, 
some tall and conical and others rounded ; they 
have little “ lanterns” on their tops. Domes 
must have been indigenous by the great 


72 ARCHITECTURE 


rivers of the East from a very early time; 
according to Miss Lowthian Bell, the houses 
of the modern mud-built villages of north 
Syria and northern Mesopotamia are covered 
with conical dome-like roofs like those shown 
on the Assyrian slab; see also the remarks of 
Perrot and Chipiez and Choisy on this subject. 
The church at Bosra, built in 512, has a tall 
dome of a semi-elliptical form; if it is of the 
same age as the church it is an interesting 
link in the tradition of 
dome-building in west- 
ern Asia. Fig. 14 is 
from Sarre and Herz- 
feld’s recent volume 
on Mesopotamia. 

The lower part of 
palace walls were 
covered by the large 
sculptured slabs _ of 
alabaster, a fine collection of which are housed 
at the British Museum. Layard says that 
they were painted in colours, and many traces 
of this are still to be seen on them. 

To Mesopotamia we probably owe the 
development of cities, great irrigation schemes, 
ordered gardens, water supply, the use of 
lead and asphalt, drainage and fortress-build- 
ing. Bricks may have been made _ here 
earlier than in Egypt; here the arch may have 
been invented. The vault seems first to have 





BABYLONIA AND CRETE 73 


been systematically used in the monumental 
structures of Mesopotamia, and here the dome 
became prominent. 

At Susa an early temple has been found by 
De Morgan, built of burnt brick and enamelled 
tiles. According to Strzygowski, the original 
home of burnt brick vaulted construction and 
of the method of balancing big vaults by 
smaller ones, was Mesopotamia. The casing 
of important external parts of buildings with 
enamelled bricks forming figures, was a 
striking feature; it culminated in the magni- 
ficent frieze of archers now at the Louvre. 
In Egypt, as we have seen, coloured faience 
was used internally. Fine works of sculpture 
have been discovered which date from about 
3000 B.c. 

On the Assyrian slabs columns are repre- 
sented standing on cushion-like bases. Either 
these are the originals of the Ionic base or 
vice versa. Other bases are _ sculptured 
sphinxes or lions. Possibly by the media- 
tion of Roman architecture this was the 
source for the beasts carrying columns at the 
porches of Romanesque Italian churches. 

In the later art of western Asia, Greek 
influence strong and constant may be de- 
tected. The columns at Persepolis are modi- 
fications of the Greek Ionic order, the tomb 
of Cyrus is almost pure Greek work, and the 
influence of later Hellenistic art spread over 


TA ARCHITECTURE 


all the Orient. At an earlier time the Assyrian 
art of the eight and ninth centuries shows 
many resemblances to archaic Greek and 
JEgean art. Small columnar erections of 
Greek fashion are shown on the slabs at the 
British Museum. Even the slabs themselves 
probably had a Cretan source, as will appear 
below. Again, the rosette decoration, so 
common in Assyrian decoration, is the typical 
AXgean ornament. These rosettes seem to 
have been a decorators’ memory of the ends 
of round timbers which were built into the 
walls as bond. 

A third early civilization arose on the 
northern shores of the Mediterranean, and in 
the islands of the Augean. Its chief centre 
in the second millennium B.c. was Crete. 
The pottery and other remnants indicate an 
age going back to the time of the early 
Egyptian dynasties. Then, as later, there 
was communication between the Egyptians 
and the people of the Augean who produced 
the first European architecture. 

About a century since, drawings made 
known in the west some remarkable monu- 
ments at Mycenz, which it was seen must be 
those which Greek authors had described as 
belonging to the heroic age. One was a gate- 
way of huge stones in a city wall. Above the 
lintel of the gateway a triangular void had 
been left to relieve it of the weight and the 


BABYLONIA AND CRETE 75 


space was filled by a sculptured slab. This 
was the Lion Gate of Mycenz. Another 
famous monument was a large circular tomb- 
chamber, roofed in beehive form by gathering 
the courses of the masonry inwards like a 
tall dome set on the ground; the exterior was 
buried in a mound of earth; a passage to the 
door of the chamber was formed in the outer 
part of the mound, walled on each side, like 
an inlet in the side of a railway embank- 
ment. On each side of this door, which again 
had a triangular relieving space above it, 
were highly-decorated shafts, of which many 
fragments were found. The largest pieces 
were brought away and, after having been 
forgotten in an Irish garden, they were re- 
discovered and given to the British Museum, 
where a restoration of the gateway is now set 
up. The decoration is of very refined work- 
manship, consisting of spirals, some of which 
have circular sunk centres which were made by 
a tubular drill. 

At Tiryns a beautiful frieze-like band of 
similar work still, when discovered, retained 
blue glass inlays in such sinkings. It was soon 
seen that this blue glass must be the cyanus 
of Homer. The interior of the dome, which 
was nearly fifty feet in diameter, was covered. 
at intervals with holes, and some large bronze 
pins were found which show that it must 
have been studded with rosettes or stars, 


76 ARCHITECTURE 


doubtless of gilt bronze. The general idea 
thus resembles in some degree the sprinkling 
of stars over an Egyptian ceiling, but the lavish 
use of bronze, here and elsewhere in art of 
this type, was a new gift to architecture of 
which the classical Greeks made great use. 
At Orchomenos a part of a beautiful ceiling 
wrought all over with spiral patterns on 
alabaster slabs was found in a similar tomb. 

Comparison with Egypt and other methods . 
of inquiry led to assigning an era to this art 
which we may best remember as following on 
the year 1500 B.c. Dr. Schliemann discovered 
works of asimilar type, and others still earlier, 
in the citadel of Troy. 

Greek legend seemed to point to Crete as 
being an important centre in the pre-Homeric 
age. In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans bought land 
on the site of Knossos, where he soon ex- 
cavated a great complex of buildings which 
has proved to be a vast palace—almost 
certainly the “Labyrinth of Minos.” Here 
were halls with columns of wood larger above 
than below (a quite reasonable thing in 
framed construction, like the “legs” of a 
modern table), a portico with a double 
row of six pillars, wide stairs rising in many 
flights, and bathrooms. The chambers had 
plastered walls painted with scenes or orna- 
ment, and sometimes modelled in low relief 
before painting, and many of the walls had 


BABYLONIA AND CRETE “T 


dadoes of gypsum (alabaster) slabs. Evi- 
dence was found for windows. ‘There was 
walling of fine masonry and of rubble set in 
clay, also of crude bricks, and some burnt 
brick has been found. The floors were paved 
or covered with hard plaster. (That of a hall 
at Tiryns was painted with fish on a blue 
ground.) The streets were paved and had 
built drains, and socketed pipes for drain- 
age or water supply have also been found. 
Pottery, ivory carvings and gold-work were 
all very beautiful. 

One characteristic of this A%gean architec- 
ture was the use of casing-slabs of alabaster 
or stone as dadoes to walls built of inferior 
materials. These slabs were frequently put 
against the wall alternating with a thicker 
stone rebated so as to cover the joints of two 
adjoining slabs, a method of construction which 
was taken over into the Doric frieze. The 
beautiful band found at ‘Tiryns, usually called 
the frieze, was of this type, and probably 
it was a dado. At Knossos, Sir A. Evans 
uncovered the base of a wall which had thick 
slabs on both sides linked together through 
the wall by short timbers dovetailed into the 
slabs. The fine fragments of slabs sculptured 
with oxen in the British Museum have similar 
indentations for fixing, and these too were 
probably part of a dado. Thin slabs of 
marble were also used for casing, and even at 


78 ARCHITECTURE 


this early time some of the painted decora- 
tion imitated marble slabs. 

Round tombs like that at Mycenz have also 
been found in Crete. These beehive domes 
closely resemble, as has been mentioned, the 
chambers in the Egyptian pyramids of the 
Twelfth Dynasty, and very much in the art 
witnesses to the closest contact with Egypt. 
While this Augean art gathered from, and 
perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals 
to the north and west of Europe, where the 
productions of the bronze age clearly show 
its influence. - 

A recent visit to the chambered mounds 
of Brittany, which have their great stones 
crudely ornamented with spirals, has con- 
vinced me that they belong to the same 
cycle; and if they, then also our own dolmens, 
and New Grange in Ireland. Stonehenge, 
which is built of wrought stones, having the 
uprights tenoned into the lintels, has in it 
something of style; it isnot savage. On this 
line of thought we might date it nearer 1000 
than 2000 s.c. When, about twelve years 
ago, one of the great lintel stones fell, it was 
easy to see on the newly exposed surface, 
which had rested on the upright stones, that 
the shape had been obtained by bruising 
off the excess of material, leaving a pitted 
surface. The first wave of civilized art in 
Kurope flowed from the Avgean. 


BABYLONIA AND CRETE 79 


The permanent gifts of this art to the 
repertoire of universal architecture appear to 
have been important. The following may be 
suggested : the moulded capital (the germ of 
the Dorie order), attached ornamentation of 
bronze, the staircase with returning flights, slab 
wall-linings, the architrave doorway, rosette 
and meander decoration, and naturalism in 
ornamentation—in Egypt the wonderfully 
natural birds and beasts were not so much 
ornament as an attempt to make in the 
tombs substitutes of the living creatures. 


s 


CHAPTER VI 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT 
AFTER PERFECTION 


WE have seen that in the islands of the 
Afigean and in what became the Greek lands 
around its shore there early flourished the first 
European style of Architecture. This type 
of art has been found in Asia Minor and in 
Italy, as well as at Mycene, Sparta, Athens 
itself, and many another Greek site. This is 
the art of the heroic age with which the 
Homeric poems deal; it is the background of 
Greek art proper. About 1800 B.c. there 
were great upheavals and invasions which 
almost entirely subverted the Aigean civiliza- 
tion, so much so that except for remains of 
pottery there still exists hardly any direct 
link between Aigean and Greek art. Indeed, 
we are not sure as yet whether the Augean art 
was merely an underlying stratum which 
influenced Greek art, or whether it is to be 
considered as a first phase of Greek art itself. 
But it is clear that, whatever change of 
population and Bait aortas may have been, 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 81 


Greek art is rather the resumption of the old 
traditions than a new departure. 

If it be asked whether there is any evidence 
for continuity other than likeness, the answer 
must be yes. In the Homeric poems this 
parent art is described with great fidelity, and 
to the Greeks of the early historic period it was 
evidently a very real ideal. Again, Homer’s 
ideals are in much the ideals of mature 
Greek art. Stonework was to be polished, and 
much bronze, gold, and ivory were to be 
used. Shining, glistening, well jointed, are the 
favourite epithets. 

Many of the early monuments remained in 
later days. Thus the great beehive tomb of 
Orchomenos was perfect in the time of Pau- 
sanias, who speaks of it as the most wonder- 
ful building in Greece. In remote districts 
AXigean types long persisted. Thus in Phrygia 
several roughly sculptured pairs of affronted 
lions have been found which evidently follow 
the same tradition as the Lion Gate at Mycene, 
but they must be relatively of late date. 
Again, on the Phaistos Disc appears a symbol 
that is a picture of a little wooden building 
such as mightbe drawn from the fourth-century 
Lycian tomb in the British Museum, which 
represents a wooden, ark-like structure that 
itself was evidently copied from the type 
of primitive buildings well known in the 
country. 

EB 


82 ARCHITECTURE 


When Greece entered on her period of high- 
strung life the time of first invention in the 
arts was over—the heroes of Craft, like Tubal 
Cain and Deedalus, necessarily belong to the 
infancy of culture. The phenomenon of 
Egypt could not occur again; the mission of 
Greece was rather to settle down to a task 
of gathering, interpreting and bringing to per- 
fection Egypt’s gifts. The arts of civilization 
were never developed in water-tight compart- 
ments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom 
all over the modern world. Further, if any 
new nation enters into the circle of culture it 
seems that, like Japan, it must “ borrow the 
capital.”” The art of Greece could hardly 
have been more self-originated than is the 
science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and 
of the fortified town must have spread from 
the East, the square-roomed house, columnar 
orders, fine masonry, were all Egyptian, as 
were many methods of workmanship and ideals 
of proportion. Besides this external source 
in a living higher culture, the Greeks found 
on their own soil the splendid monuments 
of the heroic age. Not only is this true of 
architecture, but Greek coins and gems show 
close study of primitive prototypes. Even 
after the Dorian invasion the craftsmen would 
have continued to belong to the old races. 
If blood is thicker than water, the land is 
thicker than blood. There was yet a third 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE — 83 


element which was contributed by the tradi- 
tions brought in by the invasions which over- 
turned the Agean civilization: a barbaric strain 
which was only controlled and transcended 
a few generations before the age of perfec- 
tion. About the tenth century B.c. the arts 
of Greece began to emerge, in the fifth they 
blossomed, and by the end of the millennium 
the impulse seems to have been exhausted. 
One of the marvels of Greek art history 
is the rapidity of the movement through 
maturity. Its progress was like a comet’s 
at the perihelion. After centuries of artistic 
rudeness there was a couple of generations of 
intense training, then attainment by another 
generation, and the beginning of decay at 
once followed. The barbaric element gave 
vigour—a hard, gem-like quality which is so 
marked in all phases of the art. It has been 
well said that no art can be classic which has 
not been barbaric. The movement of every 
great school of art seems to be through a 
regular curve. 

Many important sculptured works of Doric 
architecture erected about 600 B.c. have been 
made known to us by excavation. The older 
Parthenon at Athens, with its sculptured 
pediment, the temple at Assos in Asia 
Minor, the temple at Selinus in Sicily, with 
sculptural metopes, and the temple recently 
discovered at Corcyra in Corfu, are the most 


84 ARCHITECTURE 


remarkable examples. The last was a large 
structure about 150 feet long by 65 feet broad. 
The Pediment group was extremely rude, the 
principal features being a huge Gorgon in the 
middle supported by crouching lions on either 
hand. Still earlier works have been found at 
Olympia, Sparta, Thermon, and other sites. 
At first the temples were built of crude brick 
strengthened by timbering; the columns were 
of wood, and the walls had a stone basis to 
lift them above the ground. This method of 
crude brick construction, it must be remem- 
bered, persisted right through antiquity, and 
into modern times for secondary purposes, 
that is, for the great bulk of building work. 
Some at least of these early temples had slop- 
ing roofs covered with tiles; others had the 
Egyptian and Augean roof of close-set timber- 
ing supporting a thick bed of clay. It has 
been suggested by Prof. Ridgeway that 
the ‘span roof,’? which gave pediments to 
the Greek temple, was brought in by the 
northern tribes. He quotes Pindar as saying 
that the Corinthians were the first to put 
gables to their temples. Both types of roof 
seem to be mentioned in Homer. A building 
with a span roof is shown on the Phaistos 
Disc, this is probably the earliest evidence for 
it which exists. i 

As long ago as 1884 Dérpfeld showed the 
close connection between the Doric temples. 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE = 85 


and the structures of Atgean times. In 
later temple construction the base course of 
the walls is made double the height of the 
other courses. This plinth is derived from 
the stone basis under the crude brick walls. 
Behind a Greek portico the side walls of the 
cella project and are finished with pilaster-like 
members called aniw. The peculiarity of the 
Greek anta is that its return on the flanks 
is very narrow as compared to its width in 
front. This was a memory of the plank-like 
timbers which anciently formed the termina- 
tion of the mud-brick walls. The external 
colonnade of columns, which is such a magnifi- 
cent and characteristic feature of the Greek 
temple, seems to have originated in a sort of 
verandah added around the cella of primitive 
temples to protect its walls. Evidence was 
found at Olympia which showed that the 
peristyle and the beam above had been of 
wood. When we consider types of planning 
we again find that the Greeks closely followed 
Aigean precedent. At Troy, Tiryns and 
Knossos halls with columns have been found 
from which the temple plan was easily de- 
veloped. The simplest form of columnar hall 
is that in which the space is divided in two 
by a central row of columns. It is uncertain 
whether a building of this type at Troy was 
a hall or a temple. The recently excavated 
primitive temple at Sparta had such a row of 


86 ARCHITECTURE 


wooden columns down the centre correspond- 
ing to wooden uprights which strengthened 
the crude brick walls. At Thermon an archaic 
Doric temple has been excavated which was 
also of wood and crude brick built in this 
form. The great temple at Pestum, which 
used to be called the Basilica, is the best- 
known example of this type. Here the 
longitudinal division is very striking because 
a second row of columns was superimposed 
on the lower story. Early Ionic temples with 
central rows of columns have been found at 
Neandria in Asia Minor and at Locri in south- 
ern Italy. The latter plainly showed that the 
external peristyle was a later addition around 
the cella. The Propyleum, a roofed porch 
with pillars in front, is of Augean and Egyptian 
origin. 

As has been said, the circular plan of the 
Mycenzan tombs was probably not an iso- 
lated phenomenon. The circular hut must 
have been built for many humbler purposes. In 
the shrines over the sacred vestal fires of the 
Latins the tradition of the hut with the hearth 
in the midst was continued. An early Tholos 
has recently been excavated at Delphi. It 
was about twenty-two feet in diameter and 
was surrounded by a ring of thirteen Doric 
columns only about eight feet high. It seems 
to have been built in the sixth century. The 
Skias, which was erected about the same time 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 87 


at Sparta, by Theodorus of Samos, must have 
been of the same form. The tradition was 
continued in the fourth century in the beautiful 
Tholos at Epidaurus, of which large remains 
have been discovered. 

Mature Greek architecture had two modes— 
the Dorie and the Ionic, names which corre- 
spond to native and colonial, or to old and new. 
The typical plan of a Doric temple with a cella 
having a portico of two columns between 
ante is derived from architecture of the 
Aigean age. The Doric capital was obviously 
developed from the same parent style, as may 
be seen by examining the capital from Mycenze 
in the British Museum. The curious Doric 
frieze of metopes and triglyphs follows the 
ancient type of slab and bondstone construc- 
tion used for dadoes, the cornice is an eaves- 
course of projecting rafter-ends copied into 
stone. 

In the rich colonies of Asia Minor a compan- 
ion type of building to the Doric sprang up 
in the Ionian style. It was more slender and 
elegant than the masculine Doric order. Its 
principal characteristic was a capital which 
was not cut from a square block, but from a 
block longer one way than the other, the ends 
being carved into spirals. The column was 
also planted on a base, and did not rise 
directly from the pavement as did the Dorie. 
This base, in origin, was a stone block set under 


88 ARCHITECTURE 


a wooden post. The Ionic cornice with its 
dentils is a translation into stone of the over- 
hanging part of a flat roof; in some early 
examples the dentils are rounded and close 
together, representing the ends of the poles 
which supported the flat terrace roof; in this 
form it goes back to Augean time and to Egypt. 
Until a late time the Ionic entablature had 
no frieze, but the cornice rested directly on 
the architrave. This was the case even in 
the fourth-century temple of Ephesus and at 
the Mausoleum. The British Museum restora- 
tion of the order of the later monument is 
wrong in giving a frieze to the entablature. 
The Ionic capital, as has been conclusively 
shown, is an adaptation of the Egyptian 
Papyrus capital. As a feature of wooden 
architecture it may go back to the AXgean 
period, but it does not seem to have been 
brought into stone temple architecture until 
the sixth century. The Ionic column was 
frequently used as an isolated support to a 
griffin, a statue, or some other object. It 
was set up also asa goal post (see the paintings 
on the Clazomene sarcophagus in the British 
Museum). The high piled-up base, usually 
consisting of three spreading courses, suggests 
that it was developed as the foundation of a 
free standing pillar. The three fascize of the 
Tonic architrave, the fluting and reeding of 
columns, and the door architrave set with 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE = 89 


rosettes, are all Augean and most of them are 
Egyptian. Vitruvius says that the temple 
built by the architect Chersiphron, about the 
middle of the sixth century B.c., was the first 
in which the Ionic order was adopted, and 
nothing has been discovered which certainly 
conflicts with this statement, although an 
early Ionic temple at Naucratis has some- 
times been thought to be earlier. Large 
fragments from the Ephesus temple are in the 
British Museum, and a full and interesting 
account of it has recently been published. 
The restoration set forth in this work is not 
altogether satisfactory—for instance, a frag- 
ment of a member with an enormous egg and 
tongue moulding about sixteen inches deep, 
now in the Museum basement, has traces of 
a volute at one end which shows that it was 
the anta capital, but it does not appear in 
the restoration ; it is a pity that such valuable 
fragments should be inaccessible. Another 
valuable Ionic fragment in the british Museum 
is the upper drum of a column from Halicar- 
nassus, which is decorated with a band of 
palmette ornamentation. This, compared with 
the order of the Erechtheum, the early column 
from Naucratis, and another early column 
found at Locri, shows that this characteristie 
was well known from an early time. 

A Greek temple, Doric or Ionic, had one 
stately chamber (the cella) which was usually 


90 ARCHITECTURE 


surrounded on the outside by a row, or two 
rows, of pillars forming a continuous colonnade 
(the peristyle), the simple roof slanted back 
from the cornice over the side pillars forming 
low pitched gables at the ends (the pediments), 
‘in which were arranged magnificent groups 
of sculpture. The materials and workman- 
ship were often of the fairest and most perfect 
kinds, the walls and columns were of marble, 
the blocks of which were wrought so level 
that they seem to adhere by contact. No 
cement was used, but the stones were linked 
together by metal cramps. The stones were 
worked flat and square by means of being 
tested against a plane surface smeared with 
paint, the “red canon” of Euripides. The 
roof was laid with marble “tiles” cut thin, 
having raised edges and covering pieces. On 
the points of the gables were acroteria. The 
accessories of the sculptures, such as shields 
and spears, were of gilt bronze, the doors of 
the same material or of wood inlaid with 
ivory. The dazzling surface of the marble 
was softened and adorned with delicate 
pattern-works in bright paint. The altar of 
the temple was outside the eastern door, the 
cella was the dwelling of the god by this 
altar, around was a sacred precinct con- 
taining many smaller buildings, statues and 
trees. 

Greek architecture at the summit of its 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 91 


course is represented by the Parthenon at 
Athens, erected from c. 447 to 485. It isa 
large Dorie work built of fine marble, fitted 
together with such extreme accuracy that the 
joints are hardly visible. A peristyle sur- 
rounds the exterior, and there are additional 
columns forming deep porticoes at the ends, 
The famous frieze, representing a festival pro- 
cession of horsemen and others to the temple 
itself, was a band along the top of the cella 
wall all around under the shelter of the peri- 
style. The ceiling of the space between the 
cella and the outer columns was of marble 
slabs cut into coffers and painted in bright 
colours. The roof was of marble tiles. The 
metopes of the frieze above the columns were 
sculptured with two or three figures in high 
relief on each panel. The subjects of these 
metopes were the battles of the gods and 
giants, the legendary battles of the Greek and 
Centaurs, and the war of Troy, making up a 
sort of stone Book of Genesis. The pediments 
were filled with great compositions of many 
figures, one end showing the birth of the 
goddess Athene, the special protector of the 
city, and the other the story of how she first 
took the city under her own protection. In 
the first she and her father Zeus appeared in 
the middle of a group of the gods; to the left 
Dionysos and an exquisite group of a mother 
and daughter— Demeter and Persephone. 


92 ARCHITECTURE 


To the right are seated the famous three, 
usually called the Fates, by general consent 
the most beautiful group of sculpture in the 
world. One of the figures, the most perfect 
of all, is so luxuriously exquisite, and reposes 
so languidly, that some foreign critics have 
come to think that she must be Aphrodite. 
Drill holes on her arm and neck show that 
she was richly adorned with a necklace and 
bracelets; this and the soft raiment would 
seem to confirm the view; moreover, the figure 
corresponds closely to a reclining goddess 
sculptured in relief on the frieze which is 
known to be Aphrodite. In the interior of 
the cella there were rows of columns on either 
side supporting the roof, and in the farther 
half of the central space rose a colossal figure 
of Athene herself. This amazing statue, the 
masterwork of Phidias, was formed of casings 
of gold and ivory over a wooden core; spark- 
ling precious stones were set as eyes into the 
ivory face, and tresses of wrought gold fell 
on the shoulders from under a superb helmet. 
The goddess stood with her left hand on the 
edge of her round shield, carrying on her 
extended right hand a winged figure of 
Victory. She was the protector of the city 
who bestowed victory on the Athenians. 
No light entered the temple save from the 
great door opposite the figure, which must 
have been brightly iluminated by many lamps 


ee Ee —_ 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 93 


suspended about it. With its blazing eyes, 
delicate curls of hair, ivory flesh, shining rai- 
ment and added adornment of jewellery and 
painted details, it went far beyond what we 
conceive as sculpture: it must have seemed 
a “double” of the goddess herself, really 
dwelling in her temple. A sight of Athene 
must have been a tremendous experience. 
Even to the modern Renan a visit to the 
Acropolis seemed like a revelation of the divine: 
‘‘The whole world seemed barbaric, the 
Orient shocked me by its ostentatious pomp 
and its impostures, while the majesty of the 
best Roman seemed only a pose compared 
to the ease and simple nobility of the citizen 
who could comprehend what made the beauty 
of the Parthenon.” 

In the great period of the fifth century the 
aim after a perfect type led to standardizing 
arrangements and forms and endeavouring to 
perfect them along a very straight line. But 
before the fifth century there are very wide 
variations in even the simple Doric type. A 
beautiful variety of the Doric capital was 
popular in Sicily and southern Italy, which 
had a hollow throat under the echinus. One 
of the temples at Pestum had a panelled 
soffit to the pediment cornice; one of those 
at Selinus had big and small cornice blocks 
alternately in the lateral cornices. The great 
temple at Agrigentum had enormous half- 


94 ARCHITECTURE 


columns attached to closed elevations; the 
scale was too big for it to be built in the 
ordinary form. A treasury at Olympia had 
columns which had beads between the flutes. 
Some temples had all the metopes sculptured, 
some only those at the ends. In planning 
and proportion there was constant change, 
but all was the change of ascending effort, it 
was not change to tickle tired eyes. 

These are varieties of type, but in the 
architecture of Ionia variation of detail was 
allowed in the same building. In the sixth- 
century temple of Diana at Ephesus all the 
base profiles are separately designed, the 
shafts have different numbers of flutes, some 
even being narrow and wide alternately, and 
the Ionic capitals are varied like those in a 
Gothic church. Notwithstanding this free- 
dom in workmanship, up to about the 
time of the completion of the Parthenon, 
say 430 B.c., Greek temple architecture 
had been a highly conservative—indeed, 
a sacred art. Greater perfection and in- 
tensity in the working out of a few ancient 
forms, rather than variety, was the artistic 
ideal. They aimed at perfect form, not at 
amusement for the eye. As Morris well said, 
there was a reason for everything, even though 
that reason might be superstition. The Par- 
thenon marked the close of anepoch. Phidias 
was the Michael Angelo of the Doric dispensa- 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 95 


tion. Directly after this culmination a move- 
ment set in towards capricious variation 
and luxuriant decoration. Ornament which 
before had been painted on plain mouldings 
was now carved. The S curve, or cyma 
recta, was now first introduced as a moulding 
in the gutter front of the Propylea. At this 
time the Corinthian capital was evolved as 
a highly enriched form of Ionic. The usual 
type of tombstone (stele) had been carved 
at the top into a fine palmette-like composi- 
tion of scrolls springing from tufts of acanthus ; 
and the designer of the Corinthian capital 
applied this kind of foliage to the Ionic type 
of capital. It was an outcome of the general 
tendency towards redundant ornamentation, 
and further fed that tendency, so that hence- 
forward there was a third form of column, 
the Corinthian, or luxurious, order. The 
earliest-known example, dating probably from 
about 420 B.c., was discovered at Basse, 
exactly a century ago. Others hardly later 
have been found at Epidaurus, and _ still 
others formed parts of the Philippion at 
Olympia, and the monument of Lyiscrates at 
Athens. 

According to Vitruvius, the Greeks pro- 
portioned their buildings so that all the parts 
were related to one another; the plan might 
be twice as long as broad, the height of the 
columns would be likely to have a simple 


96 ARCHITECTURE 


relation to the diameter, and so on; this, as 
we have seen, had been an Egyptian idea, and 
is quite natural at an early time, although there 
is no reason if a column may be eight or nine 
diameters high, why it should not be anything 
between the two. ‘The real proportions of a 
structure were, of course, determined by tra- 
dition, purpose, cost, situation, and materials; 
the rest was a slight modification superimposed 
afterwards—a, getting rid of the half-inches, as 
it were. 

Much time has been spent in trying to 
elucidate Greek proportions, for the most part 
time wasted. The idea of looking for such 
proportions has been a most disturbing factor 
in the study of Greek buildings, and we hardly 
have accurate dimensions of any one in feet 
and inches, because the student was set on 
evolving some scheme of measures in the 
modulus of the diameter. If it didn’t fit he 
added on a foot or two and said it must be so. 
Simplicity, clearness, accuracy, repetition, the 
eye can estimate, but it takes no heed of the 
accuracy of the relation of eight to one, or the 
same with two inches added or taken away. 
It is quite an assumption that eight to one 
is good for a column; it depends on many 
things; the addition or subtraction of two 
inches might improve it. 

It is quite different with modifications by 
curvature and other adjustments made by 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 97 


Greek masons; here we have something tan- 
gible, if subtle. These modifications may be 
used to bring about unity. If, for instance, 
the eight columns of a portico incline towards 
the axis and there is some adjustment in the 
spacing, you do not have one factor repeated 
eight times, but together they make up one 
whole thing—a, portico. 

Curvature of lines again furnishes an inter- 
mediate between the straight and the rounded, 
between cornices, columns, and sculptures. 
It takes off the hardness, as we should say. 
It will correct any look of sagging in horizontal 
lines, and it varies the lighting on surfaces. 
Such adjustments are most natural in a highly 
refined school of architecture and need no 
explanation. 

It is so usual to consider Greek architecture 
from the point of view of the evolution of 
the temple and of the orders that it may be 
well to give a general, if summary, account of 
it as building procedure even at the risk of 
some repetition. Early walling of crude brick 
or rubble was strengthened by beams and posts 
of wood. Fine ashlar masonry was built in 
Crete at least 2000 years B.c. The early type 
of masonry, usually called polygonal, was 
occasionally continued in later times, very 
accurately executed. The walls of the little 
temple at Rhamnus were of this kind, and the 


thick marble slabs of the pavement of the 
G 


98 ARCHITECTURE 


sixth-century temple at Ephesus made quite 
a crazy patchwork. In fine squared ashlar 
the bedding and jointing were very accurate, 
and all such masonry was put together with- 
out any cement, but the stones were linked 
together by metal cramps and dowels. Later 
cramps are of the form of a rolled iron girder 
H, earlier ones resemble the letter Z if it is 
bent a little so that the turns are at right 
angles. 

Walls were completely dressed down after 
erection, and the fluting of columns was then 
done. This was probably a late custom, for 
the walling stones of the sixth-century 
temple at Ephesus are slightly chamfered all 
round, evidently for the same purpose of pre- 
serving the edges of the blocks. Stones were 
frequently hollowed out at their back so as 
to reduce their weight. In this way ceiling 
beams and lacunars were considerably light- 
ened. A cornice stone from Xanthos in the 
British Museum is anexample. The lacunaria 
or masonry ceilings were formed of thick 
slabs, with a series of square coffers dug out 
of them. In the Theseum and other places 
the squares were pierced right through, and 
little covering pieces like tiles were set in 
rebates. At Basse the coffers are not square, 
but in various proportions of lozenges. At 
Priene and the Mausoleum there was only 
one big coffer to a columniation, and it was 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 99 


reduced by a series of over-sailing margins to 
a panel of fair size. 

If temples were not built of marble, and 
comparatively few were, the masonry was 
covered by a thin coating of very fine plaster 
rubbed down to a smooth face to take the 
painting and gilding. More than a hundred 
years ago Goethe observed that the temple of 
Agrigentum had “ been covered with a thin 
coating which would please the eye and pre- 
serve the stone.’ The last clause has an 
importance which modern builders have for- 
gotten. All stonework in our climate ought to 
be covered by paint or lime or some protecting 
skin, and without it it looks quite raw and 
makes one shiver. Plastered temples were 
fully coloured with washes and ornamentation. 
Marble temples were coloured in part and 
picked out with gilding—illuminated as it 
were. The triglyphs were usually a bright 
blue, also the cornice blocks above; the spaces 
between the latter and the bands were full 
red; ceiling panels were usually blue, with a 
gold star, and so on. The margins and 
mouldings had delicate little frets and honey- 
suckle patterns. Even the figure sculpture 
was brightened with gilt bronze and painting. 

Greek mouldings were very few. There is the 
ovolo or echinus of the capital, and a similar 
roll or cushion which seems to be an essential 
part of a base. The ‘‘ Egyptian cavetto”’ 


100 ARCHITECTURE © 


is found in terra-cotta roof casings of an 
early date. The most curious moulding when 
seen unadorned is the ‘“‘ hawk’s beak,’’ but it 
was always painted into a series of petals; the 
beak part is formed by the turned-over tips 
of the petals. The carved egg and tongue 
moulding had its origin in the same idea: 
it represents a series of petals turned out 
and down. Then there is the elegant reversed 
cyma moulding, always painted or carved 
with a row of leaves, and finally the cyma 
recta. | 

The Greeks restricted themselves in the 
main to two types of columns, but there was 
much freedom in the use of them. In the 
Propylea, built in the fifth century, directly 
after the Parthenon, both kinds were used. 
Only a few years ago it was thought that the 
caryatid supports at the Erechtheum were 
a freak of design, but they were in use in the 
sixth century, and probably had even then a 
history, for the farther we go back the nearer 
we get to a time when statues and pillars 
coalesce, and when the pillar was itself a 
sacred thing. The sixth-century caryatides 
found at Delphi are remarkably like those at 
the Erechtheum, so there is no doubt of a 
continuity of tradition from the sixth century 
onwards. A few years ago a caryatid figure 
was discovered at Tralles, of an early manner, 
although it was itself late. It was compared 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 101 


by Collignon with the others of the same type, 
and it was seen that it must have derived from 
an original work of about 470 B.c. It has 
several divergencies from the Erechtheum 
type, the most striking of which is that the left 
arm was raised and evidently touched the 
architrave. On the other hand, there were 
many points of resemblance to the “* maidens ” 
of the Erechtheum, and it is clear that all 
must have followed one general tradition. 
Another very curious architectural member 
is the acroterion, which was set on the gables, 
sometimes one, and sometimes three. These 
were not late ornamental additions, but they 
appear to have been essential and important 
features from an early age. Primitive builders 
seem to have made much of the point of 
the gable by crossing the rafters, or by setting 
there some animal’s head. The developed 
form is usually much in the shape of a lyre, 
with two strong, horn-like branches, one on 
either hand, turning into scrolls and palmettes. 
It seems possible that they may derive from 
horns of consecration. Cockerell’s restora- 
tion of that on the temple of Avgina is well 
known. The recent excavations have brought 
to light other fragments, and as now restored 
in the Munich Museum it must be six or seven 
feet high. Following on this a restoration 
has been made of the great acroteria of the 
Parthenon, similar compositions of open 


102 ARCHITECTURE 


scrolls and acanthus foliage of great size. The 
late Ionic temple at Magnesia had similar 
acroteria about seven feet high, and others 
have been found at Pergamon, having pierced 
scroll-work of quite remarkable beauty. The 
pairs of acroteria at the lower angles of the 
pediments were at times griffins or other 
beasts. In later times, large groups of 
sculpture formed the central ones. At Delos 
these were composed of four or five figures 
each. Frequently a Victory was set in this 
position. 

Roofs were either covered with tiles—that 
is, large pantiles with covering rolls—or by 
marble copies of the same, ‘wrought and 
adjusted with amazing precision. They 
either dripped along the eaves, or they were 
turned up at the bottom into a sort of low 
parapet (later the cymation), having at inter- 
vals jutting spouts like toy cannon, or lion’s 
heads with open mouths. There were hip 
roofs at the Propylea. 

Besides the main line of development into 
the mature marble architecture of the fifth 
and sixth centuries, there must have been 
several collateral traditions arising out of 
wood and mud-brick construction. At Sparta 
there was a shrine plated over with bronze 
plates, doubtless on a wooden framework. 

The use of a material not impervious to 
rain seems to have led to the sheltering of the 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 103 


side walls by spreading the roof on to an 
external colonnade, originally a row of wooden 
posts. The walls were also plastered. A 
further step with this type of building was to 
extend the use of casings like the burnt tiles 
of the roof. The early temple at Thermon 
had its metopes of painted squares of tiles; 
and painted tile casings for the cornices and 
pediments had an enormous vogue in Greece, 
Sicily, and Italy. The tile-cased type of 
building found in Italy and usually called 
Etruscan is only a distant wave of the Greek 
impulse. A very fine example may be seen, 
in the terra-cotta gallery in the British 
Museum, of casings which were evidently 
nailed over timbers. The use of these terra- 
cottas covered with elaborate painted patterns 
was later taken over as an adjunct to stone 
architecture, and remnants of them have been 
found on many sites, at Olympia, at Athens, 
at Selinus, at Pestum, and most recently, at 
Bassze, where they evidently belonged to an 
earlier temple than that built in the fifth 
century. 

The staircase in the palace of Knossos rises 
in five returning flights. At Selinus the temple 
has a spiral turret-stair. Careful drainage 
works were executed at Knossos with socketed 
pipes; and excellent inspection traps of the 
fourth century have been found at Priene. 
Ample evidence for large windows divided 


104 ARCHITECTURE 


by mullions has been found in Crete. There 
are windows of the fifth century in the Pro- 
pylea at Athens, and some delicately orna- 
mented fragments of window architraves from 
the Erechtheum are in the British Museum, 
The Tholos at Epidaurus also had windows. 
A late relief at the British Museum shows a 
two-light window divided by a mullion. 
Screens of metal or lattices pierced in slabs of 
marble were largely used. The spaces be- 
tween the columns of temples were frequently 
enclosed in this way. Greek doors were of 
wood, bronze, or stone. The wooden doors 
seem to have been panelled and of quite a 
modern type; they were studded with bronze 
nails and inlaid with ivory and ebony, or had 
panels of carved ivory and gold. The marble 
doors must have been delightful things; at 
the heel they were wrought with a globular 
pivot which worked accurately in a cavity. 
This part of a door of the fifth century has 
lately been found at Argos. There are some 
good fragments of later tomb doors in the 
Leeds Museum. Heavy doors were made to 
open over metal quadrants inlaid in the pave- 
ment; such quadrants were used in the sixth- 
century temple at Ephesus, at the Parthenon, 
and several other places. At Selinus there 
were double quadrants on each side. This and 
other indications showed that the open door 
had folded flat against the wall, with a little 


BUILDING ART IN GREECE 105 


flap to cover the ends—exactly like good 
modern drawing-room shutters. 

I have endeavoured to show how this 
“incredible beauty’? of Greek architecture 
was arrived at by continuous development 
from the most humble beginnings. The 
Greeks endeavoured to perfect a limited 
subject-matter and to create eternal types. 
This mysterious Greek architecture was but 
one customary way of doing buildings, after 
all; and recent researches have shown that in 
origin the forms are barbaric and accidental 
—accidental, that is, in the sense that with 
other conditions they would have been differ- 
ent. There is little esthetic mystery about 
the mud walls and wooden props which be- 
came a cella and peristyle, or in the over- 
hanging eaves which became a cornice. The 
wonderful thing is the Greek spirit, and if we 
would share that we should concern ourselves 
with perfecting stock-brick walls, chimneys, 
and downpipes rather than in designing 
pseudodipteral peristyles and Doric triglyphs 
—that is, as builders; as scholars, let us know 
all that may be known. An attempt to “de- 
sign ” in architecture outside need and beyond 
custom is like inventing a strange alphabet 
which does not correspond to words and 
meanings. It is quite easy and quite futile. 
Forms are nothing in themselves, they are 
only envelopes of the spirit of architecture, 


106 ARCHITECTURE 


The principal gifts of the Greek builders 
to architecture are in the main those of the 
ideal and spirit. To them we owe the civic 
ideal in architecture. They associated per- 
fect sculpture with architecture. The “ span 
roof ’’ seems first to have been perfected by 
them, and they invented regular tiling of 
baked clay which afterwards was copied in 
marble. They gave us three great types of 
column—with the moulded capital (the Doric), 
of the bracket type (the Ionic), and with 
sculptured foliage (the Corinthian). They 
established regular groupings of mouldings, as 
in the Ionic cornice; they gave us carved 
mouldings decorated with palmettes, scroll- 
patterns, meanders, etec., and also modern 
types of mosaic floors and panelled doors, 
embodying the principle of “‘ framing ”’ wood 
together. The Greeks also turned in a lathe 
the legs of furniture. To them also we owe 
theatres, stoz, and the most perfect types of 
tombs. The spiral staircase seems to have 
been their invention. The Greeks first freed 
the spirit of beauty from the hieratic; architec- 
ture was purged of terror; they aimed at what 
was gracious and lovely. 


CHAPTER VII 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEERING 
BUILDING 


WHEN the great culmination of Greek art 
was overpast—that is, when the forces which 
had produced it began to be dissipated and 
doubt arose—a long lovely evening closed in 
over the Greek world. At this time the 
architects turned for satisfaction either to 
esthetic design, to variety, to the picturesque, 
and to redundancy of ornament, setting aside 
the Greek mean and measure in favour of 
what might astound; or, on the other hand, 
they sought a basis for their art in science 
and public utility. It was at this time, as 
Gompertz points out, that great engineering 
works were undertaken in the Hellenistic 
world. Hippodamus, the planner of new 
cities, and Philo, the architect of the arsenal, 
were the early leaders in this movement. 
It has been said of the latter that “‘ he was 
the apostle of the new practical utilitarianism 
which heralded the union between architecture 
and engineering so characteristic of the last 


centuries of Greek art.”’ It was on the wide 
107 


108 ARCHITECTURE 


foundations laid at this time that the mighty 
engineering of Rome was reared. Greek 
religious art had restricted itself to fine stone- 
work and to lintel construction. As Morris 
has said, a Greek temple was a refined 
Stonehenge, and a larger range of power 
might only be obtained by casting back to 
-‘mud and brick origins or by borrowing from 
other countries. A great new factor in 
what I call the “powers” of European 
architecture was to be obtained by bringing 
in the arch and the vault. 

After the conquest of Alexander a new 
situation was created in the world of art. 
His empire was largely eastern, and his new 
capital in Egypt—founded in 832 B.c.—had 
necessarily to be built according to the 
material conditions present in the country. 
It was planned on a regular scheme, having 
four great colonnaded streets leading away 
from a four-arched structure—a tetrapylon— 
at the centre. Unfortunately Alexandria has 
been utterly destroyed, but it may not be 
doubted that the major part of the building 
there was of brick, vaulted and domed. We 
have seen that such building was general in 
the valley of the Nile from time immemorial, 
and the modern houses of the Delta are still 
domed. They have at the top small thimble- 
shaped additions which, Prof. Petrie tells 
me, are “hoods of bricks to act as cowls, 


<¢ 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 109 


backing to the strong winds so as to get a 
draught and keeping out rain.” (Fig. 15.) 
On the famous silver casket of Projecta 
in the British Museum, which, it is held, 
was probably made in Alexandria about 
A.D. 850, a large house is represented which 
is roofed with domes rising 
from a terrace, and _ these 
domes are of the same form 
and have similar cowls to the 
modern ones just described 
(fig. 16). The domes represented on the 
Assyrian slabs, about 1000 years earlier, are 
again identical except that they rise higher 
and are of greater importance. Alexandria 
was built over so many water cisterns that 
old travellers tell us that there was a sub- 
terranean city beneath the other 
one. These cisterns must for 
the most part have been vaulted, 
like the great cisterns of the 
fourth and later centuries at 
Constantinople. Prof. Baldwin 
Brown, some years ago, called 
attention to a passage in a Latin 
author, written about 50 B.c., to the following 
effect: “‘ Alexandria is almost entirely safe 
from conflagration, because the houses are put 
together without any floorings or timber, 
and are constructed with vaults, and covered 
over with concrete or stone slabs. . . 





Fig. 15. 





110 ARCHITECTURE 


Alexandria is almost completely hollowed 
out below ground, and is built over cisterns 
communicating with the Nile.”? Still another 
proof of the use of the dome in Hellenistic 
times is furnished by the fact that the earliest 
cupola known in Europe, the remains of which 
exist over a bath at Pompeii, is of the tall, 
conical form which seems to have been 
traditional in the East, and Pompeii was a 
non-Roman city which derived its artistic 
impulses from Alexandria. 

The perfect arch of masonry, made up of 
separate wedges of stone, had been known 
in Egypt as early as the Twenty-sixth 
Dynasty (sixth century), and doubtless Egypt 
was the centre of its distribution. At Per- 
gamon, in Asia Minor, evidence of an early 
stone vault of Hellenistic time has been 
found. Arches have lately been discovered 
at the Pireeus, and it seems certain that 
they were in general use in the Hellenistic 
world before they were introduced to Italy. 
In the Ashmolean Museum there is the model 
of a late Greek tomb at Cuma which has an 
arched doorway (c. 400). Even the pointed 
form of arch seems to have been taken over 
from early brick construction. Fig. 17 shows 
a gateway in the walls of Masada, a strong- 
hold by the Dead Sea built by Herod. 

The forms of vaults and domes furnish 
some indications of architectural heredity. 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 111 


The early Eastern arch of brick was a tall 
semi-ellipse rising gradually from the walls 
and turning rapidly at the top. This is a 
much more stable form than the semicircular 
arch, and could, in many cases at least, be 
constructed without any centering. When 
we become accustomed to it, it is seen to 
be the most beautiful form of arch, for it is 
the most perfect and scientific. A difficulty 
must have arisen in trans- 
lating this form into wrought 
stone, for every stone would 
have to be cut into a different 
form for its place in the 
curve. If, however, the curve sLN 
is made circular the stone 
wedges may all be made 
alike. The same is true of 
the pointed arch (which arose 
as another solution of the 
same problem), except that a special stone or 
stones have to be worked for the apex. 

The arch form at first introduced and long 
used in Italy must have been the semi- 
circular arch of cut masonry. So it was that 
the semicircular became the standard form 
even for concrete and brick arches when a 
new method of construction was brought in. 
Roman domes were also built of this profile, 
and the tall egg-shaped dome of the East, 
which shows prominently on the exterior, 





112 ARCHITECTURE 


was never adopted in Rome. The dome was 
brought to the West as a factor of bath-build- 
ing. The hot bath was built as a sort of kiln 
or oven, and the only domes mentioned by 
Vitruvius (who wrote near the beginning of 
the first century) are those required for the 
hot chambers of the baths. The ruined 
cupola of the bath at Pompeii, mentioned 
above, was a concreted shell of rubble, very 
conical, just the shape of modern domes in 
western Asia. (See Miss Jebb’s Desert Ways 
to Baghdad for a group at Harran which con- 
tinue to this day the form of those shown 
on the Assyrian monuments. ) 

Rising from a circular chamber, there was 
no difficulty in springing the bath dome from 
the walls, but complications arose at the 
angles when the dome was applied to a 
polygon or a square. We have seen that the 
Egyptians had already dealt with this pro- 
blem (p. 58). At Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli 
there are some approximations to “ penden- 
tives.”” Over the octagonal chambers of 
the Baths of Caracalla I have seen an inter- 
esting solution made by gradually approxi- 
mating the octagon to the circle in successive 
courses by making the angle more and more 
blunt and then rounded, and thus a kind of 
intersecting pendentive is formed which makes 
the transition easily and is, indeed, a per- 
fect solution. At the so-called “ Temple of 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 118 


99 


Minerva Medica ”’ it looks (from below) as if 
the base of the dome proper were set back 
for some little distance over the sides of the 
polygon, and thus little projection is required 
at the angles, and the transition is slurred 
over in the plastering, Here the cornice was 
level, and this was probably the case at the 
Baths of Caracalla, too—that is, the idea of 
the dome with its surface running on into the 
angles forming continuous pendentives was 
not accepted and the transition was disguised. 
In one or two small tombs of the third or 
fourth century the dome with regular con- 
tinuous pendentives seems to have been 
reached in Rome. These pendentives are 
the portions of a domical surface which run 
on continuously into the angles of a square 
or octagonal chamber, forming four or eight 
hollowed triangles. 

Besides Alexandria, Ephesus (now being 
explored by an Austrian expedition), Per- 
gamon and many other cities were important 
centres of Hellenistic art. At Seleukeia on 
the Tigris, built about 300 B.c., the Hellenistic 
architects must have come in contact with, 
and have absorbed, many of the structural 
traditions of Mesopotamia. 

In the Hellenistic cities of the East civic 
and monumental architecture turned very 
soon towards the big and the strange, away 
from the proper classical idea of measured 

H 


114 ARCHITECTURE 


perfection. The temple of Ephesus was 
rebuilt on an enormous scale in the middle ~ 
of the fourth century B.c. It was raised on 
a high platform of spreading steps, and the 
great columns, nineteen feet in circumference, 
were sculptured around the bottom drums. 
About the same time the great tomb of Mau- 
solus was built at Halicarnassus, which was 
to give the name Mausoleum to a whole class 
of later structures. Lucian describes it as 
‘* a tomb immense, such that never dead had 
a more splendid.”’ It was about 100 x 80 feet 
in size. There was a high basement sur- 
rounded by the beautiful sculptured frieze 
now in the British Museum, then an Ionic 
colonnade surmounted above by a pyramid 
of steps with a great chariot group at the 
apex. At Pergamon the giant altar of Zeus 
was erected, the high sculptured basis of which, 
in an over-ornate style, is now at Berlin. 
Splendid stone theatres had been built in 
Greece at the end of the great period. Soon 
every Hellenistic city of the East had such a 
theatre. The amphitheatre appears to be 
a Hellenistic invention. The earliest-known 
example is at Pompeii. City colonnades, 
baths, and palaces were all developed in 
Eastern Hellenistic cities before they appeared 
in Rome. So also were the methods of decor- 
ation like the use of coloured marbles and 
the encrustation of walls with thin slabs. 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 115 


The apse, which became such a favourite 
power in Roman architecture, must be of 
Eastern origin, for the half-dome must come 
from the land of domes. It appears to have 
been known to the Greeks. Michaelis says 
that a marble temple of the third century at 
Samothrace “ anticipates in a singular man- 
ner, with its raised choir and rounded apse, 
the ground plan of the Christian basilica.” 
A temple dating back to the sixth century 
has been found at Thebes of which “ only the 
apse remained, recalling the one at Samo- 
thrace.”” Recently some foundations have 
been uncovered at Sparta of a very early 
age which are said to have had “ rude apses,”’ 
whatever that may mean. 

To the Hellenistic age we also owe the large 
circular type of buildings like the Philippion 
at Olympia and the Tholos at Samothrace. 

The Pharos at Alexandria, the great light- 
house built about 280 B.c., almost appears 
to have been the parent of all high and iso- 
lated towers. It rose to a great height, of 
a square form slightly battered, then there 
was a tall octagonal stage, and again a round 
one; on the apex was a statue. ven on the 
coast of Britain, at Dover, we had a Pharos 
which was in some degree an imitation of 
the Alexandrian one. It was a tall octagonal 
tower. About thirty feet of it still exist. 
The Pharos at Boulogne was as important 


116 ARCHITECTURE 


as any after that at Alexandria. The round 
towers of Ravenna were doubtless inspired 
by some of these lighthouses, even if they 
were not light-towers themselves. The other 
round towers of Europe, as far away as Ire- 
land, derive from Ravenna. The Pharos at 
Alexandria was repaired by Ibn Tulun, and 
it had as great an effect as the prototype of 
Eastern minarets as it had for Western 
towers. 

An aqueduct on arches seems to be indi- 
cated on one of the Assyrian slabs in the 
British Museum; from some such source, and 
from the great cisterns of Alexandria, into 
which the waters of the Nile were brought 
at the annual inundation, the Romans 
doubtless derived the idea for their wonderful 
system of water-supply. 

Rome entered into the traditions of this 


Hellenistic art; in fact, Roman art was 


one of its branches. A few years ago it was 
thought that a gulf separated Greek from 
Roman art and the latter was said to derive 
in the main from the Etruscans. Now 
little is left to the Etruscans as originators, 
although they probably first adopted the 
Greek traditions and handed them on to the 
Romans. For this view see Mr. Frothing- 
ham’s Roman Cities. Prof. Pais, an Italian 
writer, not only shows the debt of Rome 
to Greece in art, especially through the 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 117 


influence of Syracuse, which had commer- 
cial stations at Ischia and elsewhere on the 
Italian coast, but he attributes so much to 
early Greek influence in other fields that there 
is hardly any room left for Etruscan models. 
In Sicily and the south of the mainland there 
were magnificent schools of Greek archi- 
tecture in the rich colonies which had been 
founded at an early time, and which competed 
in culture with Athens itself. Pestum, not 
far from Naples, had a splendid group of 
Greek temples such as cannot be matched 
anywhere in the mother-country. At Pompeii 
the early temple was Greek. In 1896 atemple 
found at Conca, near Antium, was built 
in the Greek form about 500 B.c. In the 
British Museum is a magnificent specimen 
of the ornamental tilework which cased the 
temple roof at Lanuvium not far from Rome. 
It is Greek in style and is obviously an offshoot 
of the terra-cotta casings such as have been 
found at Olympia, in Sicily, and in South 
Italy. The small and late Roman terra-cotta 
friezes derived from this type of decoration. 
There must have been native traditions 
in the background and customs which modified 
the plans of temples and dwellings, but the 
ideal of architectural expression in early 
Italy was Grecian. The Etruscans of Central 
Italy imported large quantities of Greek 
vases from early times, so much so that the 


4 


118 ARCHITECTURE 


vases, as a whole, came to be called Etruscan 
by those who first discovered them. A large 
number of fine Greek bronzes have also 
been found in Italy. At the same time the 
early dates once assigned to some examples 
of masonry with arches in Central Italy, and 
ealled Etruscan, have had to be withdrawn. 
The famous vaulted drain, the Cloaca Maxima 
in Rome, for instance, it has been shown, 
cannot be earlier than the Republican period. 
The arch of masonry was probably in general 
use in Italy from the fourth century B.c. 
Roman art is a form of Hellenistic art im- 
posed on a background which was mostly 
of Greek origin. Observers of a generation 
ago remarking the conflict in mature Roman 
architecture between arched construction and 
a superficial application of columns and 
entablatures, supposed that the arch was 
indigenous, and that the orders, taken over 
from the Greeks, were violently imposed on 
a native style. Exactly the opposite of this 
is true. The Greek ideals, as has been shown, 
had long been traditional when arch, vault, 
and dome were brought in by the Hellenistic 
tide. At the time of Roman expansion the 
current architecture, having great demands 
made on it, could not throw off the old wrap- 
pings quickly enough; they were, in fact, 
burst by the new engineering spirit, but 
vestiges of the old features remained as super- 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 119 


ficial adornments. This newer and_ truer 
view goes very far to relieve Roman archi- 
tecture of the unfavourable criticism which 
has been passed upon it. It was not, that is, 
primarily a system of arched construction 
which at a later time smothered itself under 
borrowed bedizenments; but it was a phase 
of Hellenistic art, the result of a transition 
from the more primitive to the later type 
of building. 

What may have been Rome’s own contri- 
bution to architecture, either in forms or 
methods of construction, is almost impossible 
to determine. It must, however, be certain 
that from the first or second century 4.D., 
Rome, having absorbed all that she required, 
distanced other competitors. In her monu- 
ments, as in her power, she became the mis- 
tress city of the world, and drew all famous 
artists to her service. I can here only en- 
deavour to give some idea of the methods of 
Roman construction, of schemes of planning, 
and of processes of decoration, aS we are 
concerned with principles rather than with 
individual monuments. 

Sun-dried bricks had been the common 
building material in Rome from an early 
time. The bricks described by Vitruvius are 
of this sort. Burnt bricks did not come into 
general use until about the second century. 
They had been used by the Greeks at the 


120 ARCHITECTURE — 


palace of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and at 
the Philippion at Olympia. This material 
was probably an importation from the East. 

Stone, of course, had always been em- 
ployed, both in rubble work and fair wrought 
masonry. Inthe mature Roman style wrought 
masonry seems to have been demanded 
only for the great monuments, triumphal 
arches, theatres, temples, and above all 
for the Coliseum. Even the largest domestic 
and civil buildings were of plastered brick- 
work. It may come as a shock to many 
that the greatest buildings of Rome, the 
vast Therme, the palaces of the Palatine, 
and even the Pantheon itself, were plastered 
externally. In this class of building there 
were usually simple stone cornices consisting 
of a moulded capping-course on projecting 
blocks, the angle one being set in diagonally ; 
and the plastered walls were finished with 
sunk grooves at intervals dividing the surface 
into blocks. At the Pantheon one of the 
tiers had pilasters of very slight projection, 
which seem all to have been wrought in the 
plaster. Portions of the external surfaces 
of the baths were finished with mosaics, and 
frequently a high plinth, or external dado, 
was cased with marble slabs. 

The most typical Roman construction was 
in concrete, or concreted rubble. It was either 
cast into a mould between timbering, or it 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 121 


was aggregated more like rubble masonry. 
In the latter case the stones were still quite 
small, so that they were thoroughly drowned 
in the cement. To retain this fluid mass 
thin surfaces of stone or of brickwork were 
raised on each face of the walls, which were 
usually of great thickness. It has been said 
that such skins would not resist the fluid 
pressure of the internal concrete, but it is 
easy to answer that they could have been 
aided by backing-up gradually on the inside 
of the external surfaces (which would be only 
raised a foot or two at a time) before the rest 
of the wet mass was put in. The Pozzolana 
cement used by the Romans had a high bind- 
ing power and made a perfect concrete. In 
the finer, earlier work of this class the 
surfaces of the walls, or rather their skins, 
were formed of little squares of stones 
roughly about four inches on the face, and 
diminishing at the back, so that they held 
like nails in the concrete of the mass which 
ran into the interspaces. ‘These stones were 
set diagonally, the joints forming a network. 
It must have been thought that it was easier 
to keep the lines in this way, or that the stones 
settled down better. In any case there was 
no idea of bond, it was simply the application 
of a coat of mail to the concrete. When 
burnt brick came to be used with concrete 
construction, some layers of large, flat tiles— 


122 ARCHITECTURE 


they were about eighteen inches square—were 
bedded through the walls at every three or 
four feet. These layers not only bound the 
external and internal skins together, but they 
locked up the moisture in the concrete stage 
by stage. For if it were too quickly absorbed 
into the part already built, or dried out by 
the hot sun, the mass would not set properly. 

When, still later, the vertical casings were 
also of brick it was the custom to form these 
in what seems at first a very curious way; but 
it was one which a little examination shows 
to have been most simple and practical. 
The flat bricks, or tiles, were broken diagonally 
into four triangles, and these were set with 
the long sides outwards and the points 
towards the centre of the wall. Thus the 
indented, bricks adhered perfectly to the 
concrete, which ran into all the interstices, and 
there was no need for any other bond. The 
triangular bricks were evidently an adapta- 
tion of the pointed stones. Vaults and domes 
were formed as continuous shells, and were 
built in rubble work, in level courses finished 
with tiled layers, but without the skins. 
They were erected on boarded centrings, but 
as the mass brought up from the walls was 
homogeneous with them, and as each stratum 
must have been set before the next was put 
in, the centres did not require to be of great 
strength, they were rather a mould than a 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 123 


support. Sometimes this centring was paved 
all over, as it were, with flat: tiles which 
adhered to the finished vault. Beside the 
horizontal layers of brick in these vaults, 
roughly built strips of brick running in the 
opposite direction usually appear in the vault 
surfaces, breaking them up into compart- 
ments. They are usually too slight and too 
irregular to have much value per se, and 
Choisy is, I think, mistaken in regarding 
them as ribs. Rather, it seems likely, they 
were introduced as hard cores around which 
the concrete might set. In any case they 
broke up the great viscid mass, and the whole 
formed a sort of “ armoured concrete.”? The 
great dome of the Pantheon is wholly, or 
largely, built of large flat bricks set in level 
courses. In some of the large vaults of the 
baths rough pottery vases—old wine-jars— 
are embedded. Being round they are very 
strong, and, building with such hollow cells, 
of course, lightened the structure. 

At a late time, probably the third or fourth 
century, some vaults were formed of parallel 
rows of socketed drain-pipes set up end to 
end in the arch form. This custom is found 
in North Africa, and the apse vault of the 
ancient cathedral of Ravenna was built so 
in the fourth or fifth century; while the dome 
of San Vitale, built in the same city in the 
sixth century, is formed of layers of pipes 


124 ARCHITECTURE 


passing in continuous spirals from the base 
to the crown of the dome, which shows, as 
Rivoira has pointed out, a continuity of the 
Roman system. The pipes were embedded 
in concrete into one uniform mass. 

Roman vaults and domes were banked up 
very much at the springing, so that they 
showed little to the exterior. The vaults 
were usually covered with additional tiled 
roofing. Our first idea of the dome is likely 
to be that it was invented as a magnificent 
architectural feature for the sake of external 
dignity, and that it was constructed as a 
hollow half-globe of fitted masonry. This 
was not the case. Such domes as have been 
built of masonry are but playthings. The 
great domes were shells of concrete or brick, 
covered outside by a sheeting of copper or 
lead, or they were plastered over, or protected 
by an additional tiled roof. The dome during 
the Roman age seems hardly to have been 
thought of as a form appearing externally. It 
had originated in mud coverings to granaries, 
and such humble structures; and when it was 
found convenient to construct it over large 
circular buildings only the internal hollow 
was considered. The outside was banked up 
with abutment to resist spreading to such 
a degree that only a flat segment of the 
dome showed even at the Pantheon, and 
not that in any near view. The construction 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 125 


of higher cupolas which should dominate 
the exteriors of buildings was developed in 
Byzantine and Eastern schools, and then 
taken over into the Renaissance. The Roman 
builders were great and daring constructors, 
who applied vaulting under all sorts of con- 
ditions in a perfectly free way. One of the 
most curious applications was the use of big 
conches, or half-domes, over external hemi- 
cycles. The builders supported vaults above 
colonnades and bent them around circular 
ambulatories; they inclined 

them at an angle, and inter- 

penetrated two vaults at 

right angles, forming thus | 9? € 
the groined vault—a form 

that appeared as early as pr wy 
c. 75 B.c. in the Tabularium Fic. 18, 

in Rome. Domes and conches 

were hollowed into gores forming vaults of 
a melon shape; others sprang in quadrant 
conoids from the four corners of a chamber 
something like the general form of the late 
English fan-vaulting. 

Timber-work was highly developed in roof 
trusses of wide span, and the military bridge 
represented on the Trajan Column had 
big laminated arched-beams. The principle 
of trussing seems to have been a Roman 
invention. 

In their ambitious and complicated struc- 


126 ARCHITECTURE 


tures the Roman architects seem to have 
exhausted all the resources of the art of 
planning. It became absolutely emancipated 
from precedent, and was pursued as research 
into the possibilities of form and combination. 
The most accomplished modern French 
masters of arrangement can do no more than 
recombine Roman elements. All sorts of 
types were explored as well for the single 
cells as for complex aggregations. Squares, 
oblongs, crosses, circles, ellipses, polygons, 
sigmas, hemicycles and foiled forms were taken 
~, 2S bases; they were modi- 
fied by annexes, recesses, 
niches, apses. These ele- 
ments were then co-ordin- 
w ated axially, bi-laterally, 
and radiating from a 
centre. Fig. 18 is the plan of a building in 
Rome known as the Temple of Minerva 
Medica; Fig. 19 shows two tombs. 

All kinds of expedients were adopted for 
continuing vistas, suggesting symmetry and 
masking irregularities, both in single build- 
ings and in the laying out of cities. An 
admirable example of this power is shown 
in the laying out of the great colonnaded 
street of the city of Gerash. The conditions 
of the problem necessitated a decided change 
of angle in its course. At the elbow a vast 
circular place was constructed around which 


‘mim os 





HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 127 


the colonnade was continued in a circle, thus 
gaining an additional beauty while veiling 
the deflection. The architectural display in 
the imperial fora in Rome is too magnificent — 
and complicated to suggest by descriptions. — 
The best view of this wonderful subject will 
be gained by a study of Lanciani’s restored 
plan of Ancient Rome, Forma Urbis Romae. 

Along with their ability to organize groups 
of complicated structures the Roman planners 
had the power of rising to a great simplicity. 
The Pantheon and the 
Basilica of Constantine 
are the greatest single 
cells ever erected. The 
Pantheon, built by Had- 
rian, is a superb domed 
rotunda about 140 feet 
in diameter and as high. 
It is surrounded by a wall mass 20 feet 
in thickness in which a series of square 
and apsidal recesses are, as it were, ex- 
cavated, thus considerably increasing the 
total diameter. Light is only admitted by an 
opening 80 feet across at the zenith of the 
dome into this immense reservoir of air, 
through which the broad shaft of sunlight 
pours and the rain falls upon the porphyry 
and marble of the floor (fig. 20). The walls 
are encrusted with fine marbles. It is the last 
word in the development from the primitive 





128 ARCHITECTURE 


hut into which light entered by the same 
opening from which the smoke escaped. 
Probably at the Pantheon also there was 
an altar of incense at the centre from which 
a wavering column of smoke arose. 

The Basilica of Constantine is a mighty 
hall of three vaulted bays. It is possible 
to group three units together without mere 
repetition, for there is a central bay with two 
lateral supports. The high vault is borne 
by very large piers, the spaces between which 
are open to the central area like aisles to a nave. 
Above the aisle vaults these dividing piers are 
continued up as buttresses sloping towards 
the main space. It is 266 feet long and 192 
feet wide exclusive of apses. The central span 
is 82 feet wide, and the vault rose to a height 
of 114 feet. The vault was coffered, and the 
floor was largely of red and green porphyry. 
The ruin is a tremendous thing. With this 
great monument, built early in the fourth 
century, must be mentioned the vast vaulted 
hall of the Palatine palace, and many vaulted 
temples like the temple of Venus and Rome. 
The vaulted halls of the baths are better 
known. With the buttresses spoken of above 
may be mentioned a series of far-projecting 
buttresses which support the high terrace 
in front of Santa Costanza, Rome. 

Roman methods of decoration and surface 
finish were as frank, and yet splendid, as their 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 129 


methods of construction. Casings of marble 
were much used either in large slabs arranged 
in panels, or in opus sectile, where morsels 
of coloured material are cut to shapes and 
fitted together in patterns. There were also 
mosaics of marble and glass. Gold mosaic 
had already been introduced into late Roman 
art. Evelyn describes the grotto of the 
Sybil which he saw near Baie as ‘“ about 
ten paces long; the side walls and roof retain 
still the golden mosaic, though now exceed- 
ingly decayed by time.’’ Bronze was largely 
used. The roof trusses of the portico of 
the Pantheon were bronze, as well as its great 
doors, and the exterior of the dome was covered 
with gilt bronze plates. Ornamental plaster- 
ing was brought to an exquisite delicacy 
of over-refinement. Wall-paintings of the 
brightest colours were executed with the most 
dexterous skill in a medium that has never 
been surpassed for this purpose. But neither 
the sculpture nor the painting were inspired 
by any high meaning; they weary one as 
mere routine decoration. All that we owe 
to the Romans in architecture may hardly 
be recounted. They absorbed all the tradi- 
tions of antiquity and renewed them into 
modern shape. ‘Their ideal of construction 
was the most perfect and generally applicable 
that may be imagined. A typical Roman 


building was of one piece, an artificial mono- 
I 


130 ARCHITECTURE 


lith; walls, vaults, floors, are all aggregated 
together in the same continuous material, 
whether it contained one or many cells. This 
is the method of Nature, and it is an idea 
which modern architects would do well to 
consider. The great architectural question 
of to-day is how to build common damp- 
proof walls; simple, solid floors; and, above 
all, roofs better than the thin slate lids we 
are accustomed to. We need neither Greek 
nor Gothic, but an efficient method, and all 
our preoccupations about “ styles ”’ block the 
way not only to high utility but to high 
expression. Much may be gathered from 
the experience of Roman builders: methods 
of vaulting in concrete, of building with 
pots and pipes, the lining of walls with hollow 
tiles, and even such humble devices as the 
use of crushed brick in mortar. Vitruvius, 
the vague theorist on esthetics, gives many 
valuable hints for the modern builder, as 
when he tells us that plastering may be 
made to adhere to brickwork which is first 
coated over with limewash. 

In Roman architecture the engineering 
element is paramount. It was this which 
broke the moulds of tradition and recast 
construction into modern form, and made 
it free once more. It is worthy of note that 
most of the famous Roman architects were 
engineers, even military engineers. Vitruvius, 


HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 1381 


who was keeper of war engines, says that 
to design them fell within the province of 
an architect. Trajan’s favourite architect 
built the great military bridge over the 
Danube. In Rome architects were called 
machinatores, structores, and magistri. ‘* Archi- 
tect? was a more general term which included 
workmen. We have to learn from Rome to 
re-identify the architect and the engineer. 
With all this mechanical perfection it must 
be confessed that there remains in the archi- 
tectural expression of Roman works some- 
thing which is not truly fine. They stand 
for force, expansion, splendour, the art was 
official, self-satisfied, oppressive. It gives 
a voice to matter as Greece had expressed 
mind. Rome was lacking in the things of 
the spirit. There is little wonder—the first 
early wonder at mysteries—left in -Roman 
art; the dew of, the morning is dried up; it 
is the great Philistine style. The architec- 
ture as ever mirrors the soul of the nation. 


CHAPTER VIII 


EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS— 
A NEW DEPARTURE 


CHRISTIAN thought must have criticized 
current classical art long before any edifices 
arose which can be called Christian archi- 
tecture. At first the art customs would be 
modified by way of simplification, and by 
change of spirit, and only slowly would a new 
corpus of secondary forms and a fresh 
alphabet of ornamentation arise. In the 
British Museum is an interesting sarcophagus 
of the early fourth century, on which is 
sculptured the story of Cupid and Psyche. It 
has been counted with the late Roman 
antiquities, but it is more probably early 
Christian. The silver casket of Projecta be- 
fore mentioned has only a few minor marks of 
Christian association. 

The Christians first met together in houses 
and burial chapels; and special buildings for 
assembly were probably built in the East 
during the second century, certainly early 
in the third century. The origin of the 


church plan has been endlessly discussed. 
132 


a 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 133 


Some, like one of the latest writers, Professor 
Lemaire, would derive it entirely from the 
atrium and reception-hall of the Roman 
house. Some would see other elements taken 
over from the temple and the synagogue. 
The most typical early church plan consisted 
of a forecourt, a nave with pillars, and an 
apse. This is the basilican plan. A Roman 
basilica, or justice-hall, approximated to this 
form, and the word Basilica 
seems to have had a general 
meaning much like our word 
Hall. The civil basilica was 
anciently the public portico 
where the chief magistrates ad- | 
ministered justice. It was after- 4 , 
wards enclosed like a temple, 

and adapted to various uses. “" "py "97" 
One custom which is certainly 

derived from temple architecture is that of 
orientation, or planning the building on an 
east-to-west axis. In the isle of Samothrace 
a temple has been found which some writers 
have called “ the real prototype of the Chris- 
tian basilica.”’ Rectangular in plan, it had a 
portico with an atrium in front only, and 
one principal facade. The interior had three 
aisles, and it was closed at the end by a 
regular apse, or semicircular niche. The small 
temple at Baalbec had a raised “ choir” 
above a crypt. Again, the early synagogues 





134 ARCHITECTURE 


of Palestine were divided into aisles by 
ranges of columns. A second type of church 
was planned around a central point in a circle, 
octagon, or cross, and derived from tombs. 
A third, the cella trichora, probably originated 
in burial chapels. These had simple naves, 
and a cluster of three apses at the end. The 
same form is found in chambers in the palace 
of Diocletian at Spalato; and a mosaic pave- 
ment of the same shape was 
excavated in England at 
Ramsbury many years ago. 
Plans of three different types 
of churches are given in 
Figs. 21, 22 and 23. Fig. 21 
is from the foundation of a 
basilican church discovered, 
at Gerash in Syria; Fig. 22 
is a cruciform Byzantine 
church from Gortyna, Crete ; 
and Fig. 23 is from a round 
church at Antepellius in Asia Minor, from a 
MS. drawing by Texier. All may be of the 
fourth to sixth century. 

In the fourth century, after the Peace of the 
Church, Christian edifices were built all over 
the Empire. The foundations of a small 
basilican church were not long ago excavated 
at Silchester, near Reading. In Rome several 
churches, the chief of which was St. Peter’s, 
were built during the reign of Constantine, 





EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 135 


who erected others at holy sites in Palestine. 
The most perfect existing early Christian 
church is that of the Holy Nativity at Bethle- 
hem, built in the year 327 a.p. This is a noble 
and impressive building, which stands over a 
natural cave, later transformed into a crypt. 
The nave has four rows of marble columns, 
supporting level lintels, and the transepts, as 
well as the east end, have 
apses; that is, it follows 
the burial-chapel type in 
this particular. The roofs 
are of wood. The exterior 
is of masonry, severely 
plain and austere. The 
interior was from the 
first adorned with marble 
casings, mosaics, and 
gilding. In the sixth fie cells 
century a mosaic of the Fic. 23. 
Nativity was applied to 
the west front, above the narthex. As struc- 
ture, all is direct and simple: as architectural 
expression, it is serious and sweet. There is 
nothing in it which is unlike late Roman art 
except the total expression itself. It is the 
Roman alphabet in a Christian sentence, it is 
modern and universal. 

Of the circular type the most perfect 
example is Santa Costanza, Rome, built 
c. 854. Above a ring of Ionic columns, set 





136 ARCHITECTURE 


in pairs, rises a central part covered by a 
dome; this and the vault of the circular aisle 
were encrusted with mosaics, some of which 
remain. The walls were sheeted over with 
thin marble and porphyry, and the drum of 
the dome was covered with elaborate devices 
in opus sectile, which at this time-was a 
favourite method of decoration. The ex- 
terior of rough brick was plastered; even the 
cornice was plastered except the blocks 
(dentils), which were of stone. The 
dome was protected by a tiled 
roof. 

The church tower may be traced 
back to the early Christian age, as 
R. De Fleury has shown. In the 
Victoria and Albert Museum there 
are some ivory tablets from the 
Werden Casket, which was carved 
about 400 A.D. On it appears a church, as a 
symbol of Jerusalem, and this church has two 
high round towers attached to it; the whole 
looks like a Romanesque church of the twelfth 
century (fig. 24). There is a somewhat 
similar representation on a panel of the beauti- 
ful doors of Santa Sabina, Rome, carved 
about 500. 

A great number of ruined churches of the 
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries exist in Syria 
and Asia Minor. In these a return to con- 
sider again the first needs of construction is 





EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 1387 


very marked. All redundance has disap- 
peared, and yet all is workmanlike and fit. 
The fronts of some of the houses associated 
with these churches are made up of a series 
of square monolith posts to every floor linked 
by big square beams, all of stone. Not- 
withstanding the great refusal of ornament 
the result is civilized, clear, and in a way 
elegant. 

In the East, under the sun of Syria and 
Egypt, “‘ detail ’’ had been changing, even in 
late classical days. At Baalbec and Palmyra 
there was a LEO for the customary 
modelled carving to 
be translated into 
two planes, so that 
foliage on one general 
surface was sharply 
defined on a dark 
background. In time this sort of carving 
became a continuous fretwork, undereut and 
relieved from the ground except for some 
attachments here and there. At Bethlehem 
the Corinthian capitals of the interior are 
very much simplified from their classical 
prototypes; they are rather shaped blocks of 
stone with added carving than sculptures of 
modelled foliage in high relief. Fig. 25 shows 
carving of this type from a church in Asia 
Minor. . 

In the late Roman or Hellenistic buildings 





188 ARCHITECTURE 


of the East many characteristics are found 
which later became general in Byzantine and 
Romanesque architecture. Arches sprang 
directly from columns without the intervention 
of an entablature. Or the entablature was 
bent over an arch and thus formed the germ of 
all deeply moulded arches. Windows had 
arched heads, the ‘‘ horizontal arch” and 
joggled lintel are known, and the bracket, or 
console, was frequently used. All or most of 
these features are found in the vast palace 
which Diocletian built at Spalato. Here is also 
a long wall-arcade of small scale and a carved 
roll-moulding around a door. These new and 
usually simplified methods were adopted by 
early Christian builders. 

Soon a further change became apparent 
which was to transform early Christian into 
Byzantine art. This name was taken from 
Byzantium, or Constantinople, the capital of 
the Eastern Empire from 3380, and in the 
sixth century the vital centre of the arts. 
The simplest mark of the Byzantine style is 
to be found in the substitution of the domed 
and vaulted church for the wood-roofed 
basilica. This change probably had its origin 
.in Christian Egypt, where domical roofing 
seems to have been indigenous, and where 
from time to time it would be applied to new 
purposes. Of late years it has become more 
and more apparent that much of early Chris- 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 139 


tian art, iconography, symbol and decoration 
must have come out of Egypt. 

In recent times a large number of carved 
fragments of Christian churches have been 
found in Egypt, including many capitals. 
These so resemble the beautiful marble 
capitals which are found in Santa Sophia and 
other great Byzantine churches that there is 
quite obviously some connection between 
them. They are of fine white limestone; 
although they cannot be dated with cer- 
tainty they are often assigned to the fifth 
century. In this case they must be the proto- 
types of the noble Constantinopolitan capitals. 
This is probably the fact, for, although some 
are of inferior workmanship, others are of 
great beauty, and most of them seem to be 
bright, original work and not degraded copies. 
Further, this type of capital appears suddenly 
full-blown at Constantinople. Byzantine 
capitals fall into several well-defined “ orders.” 
There is a bowl-capital covered with fretted 
carving, a poor example of which has recently 
been brought to the British Museum from 
Egypt. Another small bowl-capital decorated 
with palm branches, which seems to be a 
prototype of those in Santa Sophia, was 
sent to England by Prof. Petrie in 1911, and 
is now also in the British Museum. 

A capital has been recently brought from 
Egypt, and added to the Berlin collection, 


140 ARCHITECTURE 


which is of the greatest importance for the 
history of Byzantine art. It is of the bowl 
type—of limestone; and quite small. The 
workmanship is exquisite, sharp and delicate 
beyond any example to be found in Con- 
stantinople; it is covered by a network of 
foliage detached from the ground by under- 
cutting. This capital must have originated 
at the centre of inspiration for Byzantine 
carving. Another limestone capital of the 
[Meee erst x, DOW! type ab Berlin; 

Wy /// (4p where for long they 
have earnestly col- 
lected specimens of 
Byzantine art, is 
carved with foliage 











NRE ANGI di of the kind shown 
RR RRERREREE NS YH SQy 


ligne ORs in the frontispiece. 

This is a capital at 

St. Mark’s, Venice; it bears the monogram of 
Justinian, and was probably brought from 
Constantinople. But the capital at Berlin and 
several other carved stones show that the 
curious large-veined leaf was of Coptic origin. 
Another class is formed by the basket capitals 
which are carved into interlacing bands (fig. 
27). The most splendid type of basket 
capitals is that which has a panel on each 
side containing a sort of a lily, and hence 
called the “lily capital’? by Ruskin (fig. 
26). The lily panel looks more like Coptic 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 141 


work than anything else. Several varieties of 
basket capital have been found of Egyptian 
limestone, but this particular kind of capital, 
although examples are in the Cairo Museum, 
is always, I believe, of marble. There is an 
excellent basket capital of limestone in the 
Turin Museum, and there are two or three 
small ones in the Berlin Museum. Another 
variety is the melon form, a variety of the 
bowl class, which, _ 
instead of being cir- f&; 
cular under the abacus, 
spreads into an eight- 
foiled form. <A very 
fine example of this 
is now in the Cairo 
Museum; it has foliage 
of the fig-leaf kind 
shown in frontispiece, Fic. 27. 

which, as said above, 

is Coptic, but the material is marble. Alto- 
gether there is already a great probability 
that the school of carving which developed 
the noble Byzantine orders was transferred 
to Constantinople from Egypt — probably 
Alexandria—by Justinian. Prototypes for 
some of the decorative ideas can be found 
in Hellenistic art—thus the “ wind-blown 
acanthus,” the decorative unit of another 
type of capital; basket work on capitals; 
and animals or birds under the corners of 





Ke PATE Ai 
y. Reet 









ikea ges eve 
ef Pe 
Mies eysrn 


142 ARCHITECTURE 


the abacus have been found in Hellenistic 
works. 

Recently, at El Bagawat in a great oasis, 
some ruins of a large cemetery have been 
explored. It is so extensive that it has been 
called the Christian Pompeii. Probably there 
are nearly two hundred burial chapels, a 
large number of which have cupolas, many 
of which rise from pendentives continuous 
with the dome surface, the typical early 
Byzantine form. From what has been said 
above (p. 108) there is every reason to think 
that the building of domes on pendentives 
was an old Egyptian custom. The few details 
of these chapels show features derived from 
ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic sourees; 
they are probably not later than the fifth 
century. The interiors were decorated by 
paintings, much in the style of the Cata- 
combs. Another coneeption of the dome 
over a square is shown in some Egyptian 
ruins where the vaulting is brought away 
from the angles like four half-cones. The 
Persian squinch is a modification of this 
treatment. 

It would be a mistake to try to trace back 
all Christian art-origins to Egypt; but, as 
the claims of Asia Minor, Syria, and Meso- 
potamia have been urged, it is well to point 
out that, so far as extant evidence goes, the 
claims of the Egyptian school to have led in 





EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 148 


the change from Classical to Christian Art 
greatly preponderate. 

All the remains of Christian buildings in 
Egypt have never yet been adequately studied. 
A great number of ruined vaulted structures 
exist which make it very probable that many 
of the constructive methods which character- 
ized Byzantine art were taken over from 
Egypt. At the Convent of St. Simeon at 
Assouan there are some fine early brick 
vaults of a semi-elliptical 
form, that is, higher than the 
semicircle. Against themain : 
span are smaller parallel 2 
vaults which bring the work 2 
up to a level terrace. The 
great vault at Ctesiphon, in Fra. 28. 
Persia, and others described 
by Miss Bell, at Ukheithar, are so similar to these 
Coptic vaults that there must be a common 
tradition. It is recorded that Justinian sent 
the Persian king, Chosroes, workmen to build 
his palace at Ctesiphon; if it be true they 
may have gone from Egypt. There must 
have been vaulted basilican churches in 
Egypt from quite early days. Foundations of 
basilicas which had vaulted side aisles have 
been found in North Africa. Byzantine 
vaults were built in thin bricks set up on edge, 
that is par tranches stuck to the part already 
done in inclining courses, like the old Egyptian 





144 ARCHITECTURE 


and Assyrian vaults (fig. 12). In this way 


they were built without centring. Covel de- 
scribes how, about 1670, domes were still built 
without centring. 

It was said a score of years ago that there 
were probably three hundred ruined churches 
in Syria. Some are still nearly complete— 
“‘ the stone white and clean; the eye instinc- 
tively looks for workmen, uncertain for a 
moment whether they are churches in course 
of construction or ruins.”’ All is of wrought 
stone, the doors, roofs, and windows of stone 
slabs. In the buildings of Syria and Asia 
Minor several new methods and ideas were 
brought into architecture. Windows with 
arched heads are gathered in groups and a 
circular light is at times associated with them. 
Two round-headed lights with a circular eye 
just above were often used in the gable end of 
a church. Moulded courses were frequently 
set on the walls, especially under rows of 
windows; they were made to ramp to other 
levels or to bend over windows—that is, they 
became string mouldings and edge mouldings. 
Corbel tables were in use and a scalloped or 
lobed member was introduced over arches. 
The ultimate source of this last was the edge 
of the scallop shell, which so frequently filled 
the hollowed crowns of niches in late Roman 
work. This is very important, for through 
this adaptation the Roman scallop was the 


— 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 145 


origin of Gothic cusping. The lobed arch 
member is found at Qalb-Louzeh in Syria. It 
appears on the great front arch of the Persian 
palace at Ctesiphon. At the palace of 
Ukheithar the lobed arch becomes quite a 
Gothic form, as only a few large lobes were 
applied to a pointed arch (fig. 29, I). Hence 
the lobed arch passed to the Arabs and Moors, 





Fic. 30. 


then it was taken up by the Romanesque 
builders of South France, and became the 
parent form of the great family of cusped 
Gothic arches. There is a difference between 
what I call the lobed arch and the cusped 
arch: in the former the series of scallops are 
complete, in the latter there is only a quadrant 
or half a foil at the bottom. 

The widest difference between ancient and 
medieval architectures is that one reposes, 


the other strives. In medieval art features 
K 


146 ARCHITECTURE 


are grouped, parts are subordinated one to 
another, jambs and arches are formed into a 
series of recesses. Already, in early Byzantine 
and Syrian works, the new idea is seen in 
operation, the colonnade of the atrium of 
Santa Sophia was cast into groups of three 
pillars between square piers. A very remark- 
able example of group- 
ing and subordination 
is found in the recently 
discovered church at 
Sergiopolis built by 
Justinian (fig.30). The 
nave is divided from 
the aisles by three 
bays formed by big 
piers of a cross plan, 
and the spaces between 
have columns, one in 
the middle and two set 
against the piers. From 
these rise two little 
arches, under the main arch which passes 
from pier to pier. It might be a Romanesque 
work of the twelfth century, but it is of the 
sixth century (fig. 31). 

Another church in the same city had the 
remarkable plan shown in Fig. 82. The west 
front of a church built at Nicea in the first 
half of the ninth century has doors with a 
series of recessed jambs and arches. An old 





EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 147 


sketch of a church at Daulis, near Panopeia, 
in Asia Minor, shows a barrel vault supported 
by a series of transverse arches or ribs rising 
from wall piers or imposts (see Fig. 38). 
Ribbed vaulting later became important. 
The buildings of Syria and Asia Minor are 
for the most part of stone, yet the arches of 
important churches of the sixth century have 
the blunt-pointed form proper to the Egyptian 
brick arches, from which they must have been 





Fig. 32. 


derived. A group of churches explored a few 
years ago at Bin Bir Kilissi in Asia Minor 
were assigned an early date by Strzygowski, 
but Sir W. Ramsay showed that they were 
more probably not earlier than the ninth 
century. Some of these were basilican 
churches with barrel vaults. Dr. Dawkins 
has recently published a vaulted church from 
Skyros, which is of the same type, and confirms 
the later estimate of age. 

There were doubtless some Persian gifts in 


148 ARCHITECTURE 


early Byzantine art, as silk patterns and clot- 
sonné enamelling, but the architectural in- 
fluence was mostly in the opposite direction. 
As early Christian art matured over a wide 
area several varieties were formed. The best 
known was the school of Constantinople in 
the age of Justinian, but there were other 
schools in Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, which are 
gradually being made known to us. It would 
be well to keep the term ‘“‘ Byzantine ”’ for the 
school of Constantinople and to use some 
such word as ‘“ Hellenesque”’ for the whole 
group. 
Of recent years an acute Byzantine question 
has been discussed, which is: What part had 
the East in the transformation of architecture 
which led up to the Middle Ages, and what 
part had Rome? My own impression is that 
a distinction will have to be made between 
Byzantine architecture as a method of building 
and the same as expressing thought and feeling 
through building. There is not much in the 
structural system which was not Roman—the 
wider Rome of the Empire—although the ex- 
pressional results differed so obviously from 
that of classical art. Building in brick, the 
erection of domes, the encrusting of surfaces 
with marble and gilt glass were all Eastern 
inventions, but they had all been adopted 
into ‘Roman ”’ art, which passed them on 
to Byzantium. In a sense Byzantine art in 





EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 149 


Eastern cities inherited such building customs 
directly, but yet Rome had intervened, and 
we cannot say what would have become of 
Hellenistic art without this intervention, or 
how much had been brought about by Roman 
organization and been stimulated by Roman 
patronage. 

Late Hellenistic architecture must be con- 
sidered Roman to the extent that it had been 
absorbed into the Empire, and the Byzantine 
structural system derives in the main from 
late Hellenistic sources. The spirit, however, 
was of the East—Christian, Jewish, Egyptian, 
Persian, Greek. There are certainly some 
important differences between the building 
forms used in Rome itself and Byzantine 
customs; the conception of a roof as a terrace 
through which groups of domes emerge from 
the interior, seems to be entirely Oriental, and 
this was the ruling conception in Byzantine 
vault systems. One of the first great churches 
at Constantinople, built during the reign of 
Justinian, was that dedicated under the invo- 
cation of the Holy Apostles. It was cruciform 
and was covered by a group of five domes. 
Such grouping of domes was unknown in 
Rome; it derives from sources such as those 
shown in Figs. 13 and 16. It is said that 
the Apostles’ church was copied from a church 
at Ephesus. 

In the glorious Church of Santa Sophia at 


150 ARCHITECTURE 


Constantinople, built by Justinian from 537, 
the great central cupola is surrounded by 
lower semi-domes and domes of various sizes, 
which heave up one above another like a clus- 
ter of bubbles. This Church of Santa Sophia 
is one of the great things of all time. It is 
very large, yet itis a unit, not an aggregation 
of many parts. The central area, over one 
hundred. feet square, is extended to the east 
and the west by great semicircles, which 
increase the length of the central hall to over 
two hundred. From these hemicycles smaller 
apses break out, and along each side of the 
central area there are vast aisles supporting 
galleries. The size is gigantic, the more so as 
Byzantine churches are small, with this one 
exception. The scale and main divisions agree 
so closely with the Basilica of Constantine at 
Rome, that I think that building must have 
been taken as a model of size. We are told 
that the architect Anthemius had a brother in 
Old Rome. The arches of the interior are 
supported on magnificent columns of porphyry 
and verde antico marble, the walls are all 
plated with a veneering of choice alabaster, 
porphyry and marble, and the domes and 
vaults were covered with a vast area of gold- 
ground mosaics. The window and door frames 
are of marble, the doors of gilt bronze. The 
iconostasis and other fittings of the interior 
were of silver. The altar was enamelled gold. 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 151 


After the age of Justinian, the sixth century, 
Byzantine art quickly declined in power. The 
time of the dispute about images (726-842) 
forms an interval between the primary style 
and a second age, which began to emerge in 
the ninth century and culminated from the 
tenth to the twelfth. It continued to exert 
itself through the later Middle Ages, and its 
traditions are not yet wholly forgotten in the 
lands of the Greek Church. To the classical — 
age of Byzantine art we may set the limits 
450 to 850; to the second school 850-1200; 
late Byzantine art we may date from 1200 
to, say, 1800. During the early Middle Ages 
it had great influence on western Europe. 
Our William of Malmesbury knew of Santa 
Sophia, as “surpassing every edifice in the 
world.” The second school of Byzantine art 
was largely influenced by the Persian; it be- 
came much more rigid and gloomy; classical 
liberality and grace were forgotten in a darker 
expression of Byzantinism, although in the 
paintings of MSS. an attempt was made to 
return to earlier ideals. The churches of this 
time were small, and they mostly conformed 
to one type of plan. 

If a square space is divided into three in 
both directions; if at the intersections piers 
are built and a dome is set over the central 
square while the other compartments are 
covered with other domes and vaults variously 


152 ARCHITECTURE 


disposed; and if, further, a long porch extend- 
ing across the front of the square is added—we 
obtain an approximation to the typical church 
plan of this time. Usually the central space 
was larger than the rest, frequently it was 
made octagonal, the dome rising from eight 
piers. The small domes of these churches 
are often raised on “drums” containing 
windows, they have almost become small 
octagonal towers. 

The strong Eastern influence at work on 
later Byzantine architecture is shown by the 
fashion of carving bands of stone and of setting 
panels of brickwork to imitate Cufic writing. 
External brickwork was often arranged in 
patterns, a custom which seems to have been 
derived from Persia, where most elaborate 
arrangements were made in laying the bricks. 
Even some Persian domes were built with 
chevron patterns on the exterior. 

Byzantine builders frequently used the 
pointed arch, even in the classical age of the 
style. At Kasr ibn Wardan, Asia Minor, 
built in 564, the arches and vaults are of 
pointed form. The general evolution of the 
Byzantine dome was from a hemispherical 
shape at Santa Sophia to a tower-like form, 
obtained by lifting the cupola proper above a 
‘drum ” pierced with windows. The ques- 
tion of the association of windows with the 
dome raises some curious points. 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 153 


The first dome of Santa Sophia, Constanti- 
nople, fell, and was rebuilt to a higher curve a 
few years after the church was consecrated; it 
fell again in 989 and was again rebuilt. Even 
. the first work must have had a series of windows 
pierced in it above the pendentives. Proco- 
pius speaks of the “small openings left at 
intervals for the light to come through,” and 
doubtless they were exactly similar to those 
still existing in the semi-domes over the 
apses and the hemicycles. In these the 
domical surface is continuous from the walls; 
and there is no break in the curve at the 
window zone as in the present dome—a result 
of later heightening. The idea of putting a 
drum to contain windows between the penden- 
tives and the cupola may have arisen from 
the break in the spherical surface made at 
rebuilding the dome of Santa Sophia. At 
Kasr ibn Wardan, built in the year after 
the first restoration of the dome at Santa 
Sophia, a ruined dome exists which has 
eight windows, which are pierced alternately 
in the pendentives and in the lunettes of wall 
between them. The pendentives are of a 
curious form, they are not continuations 
of the domical surface, but each horizontal 
section is a quadrant, so there is no distinct 
line of penetration with the walls. The dome 
of Santa Sophia at Salonica follows the same 
type with modifications; and this becomes 


154 ARCHITECTURE 


another reason for dating the church later than 
the great cathedral of the capital. At St. 
Clement’s, Ancyra, probably of the seventh 
century, the dome has twelve great flutings to 
the interior and may have been melon-shaped 
outside, but the ruins are not sufficient to 
make this sure. 

The most splendid and characteristic art 
of the Byzantine epoch was that of the mosaic 
worker, by which the upper part of the walls 
and the vaults and domes were covered by 
pictures in bright glittering colour on a golden 
background, which fills the whole interior with 
reflected lights, continually changing, accord- 
ing to the hour and the point of view. Parts 
of the exterior, like the gable of the west front, 
were also frequently encrusted with mosaics. 
At Rome, St. Peter’s had its facade adorned 
with a mosaic about the year 450. Such an 
external mosaic exists at the sixth-century 
basilica of Parenzo, near Trieste; another of 
the same age, depicting the Nativity, filled the 
west front of the old basilica at Bethlehem. 
The fashion was long followed in Rome, and a 
beautiful late example is the mosaic of the 
enthroned Madonna with the Holy Child, 
and the Wise and Foolish Virgins, at S.M. in 
Trastevere. In the East the Dome of the 
Rock and the mosque at Damascus were 
decorated in a similar way. The usual way of 
finishing an interior was to line the walls with 


EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 155 


slabs of fine marbles, often the two surfaces 
revealed by a saw-cut were opened out side 
by side, so that the panels showed. symmetrical 
markings like beast-skins. Parts were treated 
yet more extravagantly with encrustations of 
sectile work and inlays of mother-of-pearl. 
The debt of universal architecture to the 
early Christian and Byzantine schools of 
builders is very great. They evolved the 
church types, they carried far the explora- 
tion of domical construction, and made won- 
derful balanced compositions of vaults and 
domes over complex plans. They formed the 
belfry tower from the Pharos and fortifica- 
tion towers. We owe to them the idea of the 
vaulted basilican church, which, spreading 
westward over Europe, made our great vaulted 
cathedrals possible. They entirely recast the 
secondary forms of architecture: “* the column 
was taught to carry an arch,” the capital was 
reconsidered as a bearing block and became a 
feature of extraordinary beauty. The art of 
building was made free from formulas, and 
architecture became an adventure in building 
once more. We owe to them a new type of 
moulding, the germ of the Gothic system, by 
the introduction of the roll-moulding and their 
application of it to “ strings ”’ and the margins 
of doors. The first arch known to me which 
has a series of roll-mouldings is in the palace 
of Mshatta. The tendency to cast windows 


156 ARCHITECTURE 


into groups, the ultimate source of tracery, 
and the foiling of arches, has already been 
mentioned. We owe to Christian artists the 
introduction of delightfully fresh ornamenta- 
tion, crisp foliage, and interlaces, and the whole 
scheme of Christian iconography, 


CHAPTER IX 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 


UnpER the successors of Alexander the 
influence of Hellenistic art spread widely 
over western Asia and even beyond into 
India. At Gandara, on the north-west frontier, 
a mixed school of Grzco-Buddhist art was 
formed, which subsequently reacted to some 
extent on the west. Recent discoveries of 
glazed clay images of men and _ horses in China 
show that about A.p. 500 the Western influ- 
ence had made itself felt inthe Far East. The 
Chinese tiled roof doubtless derives from the 
Greek roof. In the British Museum there is a 
sculptured fragment from the palace of a king 
of Armenia built about A.p. 200, which is in 
a debased Hellenistic style. In the Victoria 
and Albert Museum is a panel from a mosaic 
floor of quite ordinary Roman type, brought 
from Zeugma in Mesopotamia; and a rude form 
of Roman architecture was used by the 
Parthians. Fig. 34 shows some carved orna- 
mentation from Gandara of about the first 
century. It is very interesting as being one 


of the earliest-known examples of a type of 
157 


158 ARCHITECTURE 


interlacing patterns which later became widely 
distributed. 

Some early Christian churches were built as 
far to the east as Nisibis and the Arabian 
desert, and as far to the south as Khartoum. 
The terrain which came to be occupied by 
Saracen conquerors in the seventh century 
had, for the most part, long been the scene 
of flourishing schools of Hellenistic, Roman 
and Hellenesque art. 

Primitive Arabian art 
itself is quite negligible. 
When the new strength 
of the followers of the 
Prophet was consolidated 
with great rapidity into 
a rich and powerful em- 
pire, it took over the arts 
and artists of the con- 
quered lands, extending from North Africa to 
Persia. In Egypt the Great Christian School 
of Alexandria was in full activity, and in Syria, 
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, other varieties 
of Byzantine art were flourishing. In Persia 
the type of art of this period is known as 
Sassanian; its elements were in part old 
Persian, mixed with borrowings from late 
Roman and Byzantine sources. 

The earliest Arab works, like the Dome of 
the Rock and the Mosque of Aksa, in Jeru- 
salem, and the Great Mosque at Damascus 





THE EASTERN CYCLE 159 


(c. 710), are almost perfectly Byzantine build- 
ings except for some touch of added energy. 
They are the most beautiful works of their 
age. Some very interesting and beautiful 
early Arab works in Mesopotamia have re- 
cently been published by Sarre and Herzfeld. 
Fig. 29 (II) shows a cusped arch of the eighth 
century from one of the buildings. 

Arab ornamentation, as it took on a more 
distinct type, about the eighth century, seems 
to show some Indian and Chinese influence 
derived probably from contacts in Persia. 
Even in the wonderful facade of the palace 
of Mshatta in Moab, now re-erected in Berlin, 
there seems to be a slight trace of Chinese 
feeling in the ornamental carving. What 
exists is the lower part of the front wall of the 
palace, including the central doorway. The 
wall is broken by semi-octagonal bastions, 
and the whole surface is covered with orna- 
mentation, intricate as the pattern of an 
Indian shawl. Much of this carving consists 
of beasts drinking from vases, or of birds 
amongst scrolls of vine pecking at grapes. 

Similar designs are found on Christian 
ivories wrought in Syria and Egypt in the 
sixth century. The origin of this remarkable 
building has been much discussed, but the 
writer is convinced that it is an Arab work 
not earlier than the seventh century, wrought 
in the main by Christian artists. In the 


160 ARCHITECTURE 


Berlin Museum are also some small fragments 
of similar work from the castles of Juba and 
Choirane which are assigned to the seventh 
and eighth centuries; and other palaces of a 
somewhat similar type are now known. The 
carvings at the church of Sergiopolis (fig. 30) 
are very similar also. 

The early mosques were large halls with 
many slender columns supporting their roofs. 
These halls ran along one side of a courtyard, 
and were entered by doors in the long sides. 
Domes mark tombs rather than mosques; 
indeed it is said that no mosque that was not 
at least intended to contain a tomb ever had 
a dome. This custom must have been taken 
over from the Roman and Christian tradition 
of domed tombs. The Cairo domes are of 
stone, brick or clay. Those of stone are 
usually carved into chevron patterns or bold 
arabesque ornamentation. The brick domes 
are constructed in level courses without shap- 
ing the bricks, the true form being obtained 
in the plastering. Some of these are broken 
on the outside into a series of big rolls, dimin- 
ishing upwards to the centre. Large mud 
domes were strengthened by a skeleton of 
rough timbers. Some few ruined domes at 
Cairo which seem to be of an early date 
(probably about 1200) have a lantern on the 
top pierced with windows and covered by a 
smaller cupola. Here we get the type of the 


THE EASTERN CYCLE 161 


Renaissance dome. Probably the leaded 
domes of St. Mark’s, Venice, were suggested 
from Arab domes of this kind. Some of the 
Cairo domes are built in two shells with webs 
of wall between the two, like Brunelleschi’s 
dome in Florence. 

The palace of Ukheithar, explored by 
Miss Bell, near the Persian frontier, seems to 
be of the eighth or ninth century (fig. 29). 
Another similar palace is Kasir-i-Shirin, and 
yet another is the palace of Amra, built in 
the eighth century. 

Fragments of mosaics and paintings from 
Castle Amra are in the Berlin Museum; these 
were most probably by Byzantine artists. 
All these works are extremely interesting, as 
they open up a new field for the study of early 
Arab art; and in all of them Byzantine and 
Persian elements are mixed. 

The later mosques and tombs of Cairo and 
western Asia are wonderfully beautiful. They 
have a universal quality; nothing f 
is barbaric, and. little is unintel- | 
ligible; the architecture is as lovely 
as the word Arabian. 

Domes in Cairo are pointed at 
the top; and with a fine instinct for 
size, the cornice is not at the true 
springing, but many feet below. A rough 
approximation to the form of the Cairene 


domes has been given thus: Draw a circle, 
Li 





Fie. 35. 


162 ARCHITECTURE 


cut off one quarter of the vertical radius 
at the bottom and draw a level line, drop 
perpendiculars from the full diameter of the 
circle to this line; from the angles of this base 
draw two large arcs tangentially to the circle 
and meeting above it in a point. 

Persia in the later Middle Ages became the 
most brilliant centre of Saracen art. The 
buildings of Tabriz, Ispahan, Samarkand, 
Sultaniah, and other towns, are many of them 
miracles of beauty, strange yet natural, like 
things seen in a dream. They have swelling 
domes, arched porches, wide and high, tall 
round minarets curiously like factory chim- 
neys. All the walls are covered with tile- 
work painted in boldly drawn patterns. The 
Blue Mosque at Tabriz is a wonderful 
example of how the utmost splendour may be 
controlled into perfect dignity. The lovely 
dome of the Medresse at Ispahan is also 
wholly cased with tiles having patterns of 
bold interlacing curves, throwing off leafage 
like a big Persian carpet. These Persian 
domes are the most perfect ever built; in 
general form they resemble those of Cairo, 
but from the horizontal band they usually 
swell slightly outward, and the curve returning 
passes in almost a straight line to the finial 
on the apex. The shape is like that of a 
Persian helmet. The pointed form is, of 
course, the most easy to construct and the 


THE EASTERN CYCLE 163 


most stable. Sometimes, as at Bostam and 
Koum, they are actual cones—a_ perfect 
constructive form which, curiously, has been 
little used. Buddhist communities were ex- 
isting in western Asia when the Arabs entered 
the lands in the seventh century. Later 
again, under the Turkish dynasty (after 
1250), artists are said to have been obtained 
from China. There is certainly in the art of 
Persia and Turkestan an element from the 
farther Kast. Mohammedan art in India is, 
of course, a form of the Arabic modified by 
local influences. Generally, the Arabian may 
be said to be an eastern offshoot of Byzantine 
art modified by Persian, Indian and Chinese 
elements. 

Karly and late the Arabian is a style of 
great splendour and clearness of expression. 
Save for its refusal of human interest in 
sculpture and painting, which were ruled out 
by the Mohammedan employers, it is one of 
the most intellectual styles. All is direct 
structure or frank ornamentation, and there 
is no survival of misunderstood forms. 

The pointed arch was generally adopted, 
and often it was much stilted, that is, there 
were vertical pieces above the capitals before 
the curve began to spring. This may have 
arisen from the large use of marble columns, 
for in this way a bold, fine opening might be 
obtained when the arch rose from com- 


164 ARCHITECTURE 


paratively short columns. Another develop- 
ment of the stilted arch was made by continu- 
ing the upper curve below the true spring- 
ing, which, of course, made the space less 
directly above the capitals, that is, the arch 
became of horseshoe form (fig. 36). Nook- 
shafts seem to have been first used in Arabic 
architecture. They are small shafts set in an 
angular recess L at the jambs of doorways 
and other openings. Such shafts 
might be of small diameter and 
very tall, quite different from 
the normal classical column. 
Byzantine window slabs were 
developed into most elaborate 
and beautiful lattices, like those 
at the mosque of Damascus. 
All the lattices of the East, 
Indian and Chinese must derive 
from the Arab lattice. Minarets—very tall 
and slender towers—were built, which compare 
in beauty with Western spires. Foiled arches 
were carried further in design and handed 
to the West by the Moors in Spain. The dome 
was perfected as an external architectural 
form. Byzantine domes had been covered 
with lead, but these were completed in stone 
and brick, being sometimes cased over with 
brilliant glazed tiles. 

These glazed tiles, which were largely used 
as external and internal casings, were doubt- 





THE EASTERN CYCLE 165 


less derived from old Persian enamelled 
bricks. They were mostly made at Kashan, 
and similar “ Kashi” decoration has con- 
tinued in use until modern days. These 
glittering casings of hard enamelled material 
are a great architectural invention. There 
are many fine specimens of such tiles at the 
Victoria and Albert Museum. Marble casings 
and mosaics were also extensively used. An 
adaptation of Greek gold mosaic was obtained 
by making the gilt glass in little tablets 
like square biscuits, marked over by deeply 
indented lines forming half-inch squares. 
Possibly coloured glazing (not painted) was 
first made use of to form intricate patterns 
set in Arab lattices. The jewelled windows in 
the story of Aladdin were doubtless suggested 
by brilliant glass. These brightly glazed 
lattices are most beautiful. The basis of the 
typical Arab patterns is formed by producing 
the sides of polygons and stars till they 
intersect in many different ways. The germ 
of this system is already found in late Roman 
works like the ceiling at Baalbec, and many 
mosaic pavements. 

By the Crusades, by trade, and through 
constant contact in Venice, Sicily and Spain, 
the Arab style steadily acted on the West, 
and its course in the East was parallel to that 
of the Romanesque and Gothic styles of the 
West. 


166 ARCHITECTURE 


From the first the Arab builder adopted 
the pointed arch. At Mshatta in Moab, the 
arches, of brick, were acutely pointed. At 
the Dome of the Rock (seventh century), the 
arches are bluntly pointed as finished with 
marble casings, but they are probably truly 
pointed in the structure. In the mosque 
EK] Aksa (c. 690) at Jerusalem, the arches 
are big and strongly 
pointed. In the old 
portion of the mosque 
of Amr, Cairo (c. 650), 
there is a row of 
acutely pointed 
= arches below and 
=: pointed windows over 
= (fig.87). The pointed 
= arch was used in 
Fic. 37. Byzantine work, but 

it was typical of the 
Arabian styles, and by the eleventh century 
it was widely distributed over Europe and 
reached England in the twelfth. As early as 
the ninth century the horseshoe form of arch 
is common in the painted MSS. of the Christian 
Visigoths (fig. 36). 

The history of the cusped arch has been 
sketched on p. 145, so far as it affected the 
West; it spread also over the farther East. A 
screen at Ajmere in India, said to have been 
built from 1200 to 1220, has the arch shown 





(" \ Hy 
Ni 


vat 
{Ly 
\ 
Ui 
\ 


4 
s 
i) 


1 
} 


i 








THE EASTERN CYCLE 167 


in Fig. 88. Venice seems to have received the 
cusped arch directly from the Arabs, and not 
like the West from the Moors. It is very 
curious that in the late Middle 
Ages Eastern arches became 
low with a quick curve at the 
bottom and the rest nearly 
straight, like our Tudor arches. “4 
No doubt is possible as wg, 38, 

to the influence of Eastern 

patterns on Western art. The rich silks, 
especially, had an enormous influence on 
wall paintings, on. ornamental sculpture, 
stained glass, embroideries and other forms of 
art. Dr. Rock says: “Coming westward 
among us, these much-coveted stuffs brought 
with them the several names by which they © 
were commonly known throughout the Kast, 
whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence, 
when we read of Samit, Ciclatoun, Cendal, 
Baudakin, and such other terms unknown to 
trade now-a-days, we should bear in mind 
that we arrive at their derivations and dis- 
cover in what countries they were wrought.”’ 
In the 1245 Inventory of the Treasury at 
St. Paul’s is mentioned a piece of red pannus 
de aresta embroidered with yellow parrots and 
trees, given by William Longespee on his 
return from the Holy Land in 1242. In the 
Inventory of 1295 three pieces are mentioned 
as of opere saracenico. The Exeter inventory 





168 ARCHITECTURE 


mentions several pieces of ‘* Antioch.” Ac- 
cording to William of Malmesbury, Canute 
gave to Glastonbury Abbey a pall woven with 
vari-coloured peacocks. The body of St. 
Cuthbert was found wrapped in Kastern silks. 

For more than a thousand years these 
precious works of art have been like a vitaliz- 
ing pollen blown on our shores. If we would 
set seriously to work in reviving decorative 
design the best thing we could do would be 
to bring a hundred craftsmen from India to 
form a school of practice. Even Renaissance 
artists were not able to shut their eyes entirely 
to Eastern art—at Venice there was a strong 
Arab influence on the minor arts. From 
Venice a type of ornamentation spread west- 
ward which we still call Arabesque. It was 
brought to England by Holbein. 


CHAPTER X 


ROMANESQUE ART—NEW BLOOD IN 
ARCHITECTURE 


THe age of Romanesque art was the age 
of the transition from antiquity to the Middle 
Ages, from Roman art to Gothic. The 
turning-point of style, as of history, seems to 
have been reached when Charlemagne con- 
solidated his power. Up to this time the arts 
of civilization in Europe had been derived 
from the two Romes, but on this side of the 
watershed the prospect is towards the Gothic. 
From the Coronation of Charlemagne in 800 
onwards, to the formation of Gothic art (say 
about 1150), the history of architecture is 
fairly clear, and the term Romanesque can 
be applied without any doubts to this period. 
It is much more difficult to give an account of 
architecture within the borders of what had 
been the Roman Empire, between the early 
Christian period and the establishment of 
Charlemaghe’s new empire. 

In the fifth century there was a tremendous 
upheaval of society and disruption of culture 


caused by the folk-migrations and Teutonic 
169 


170 ARCHITECTURE 


conquests. At this time, Goths and Franks 
spread from the lands east of the Rhine, 
through central and western Kurope—that is, 
over the whole Roman Empire in the West. 
The Eastern Empire remained almost un- 
touched, but of course not unaffected by the 
great change. In the West, Ireland was 
isolated from the rest of Christendom. 

The Goths, it is true, were already partly 
Christianized, and in Italy, Provence and 
Spain there was no break in the continuity 
of the Church, nor was there in France, for 
Clovis, the conqueror, at once adopted 
Christianity. 

In England, however, there was a long 
interval of chaos and only at the end of the 
sixth century did the tide of the common 
civilization return with the Church. The sixth 
century—a twilight time in the West—had 
been the most brilliant period of Byzantine 
art, the age of Justinian. Santa Sophia was 
being built just at the time that the deeds 
were wrought, the legends of which form the 
story of King Arthur. 

In the Eastern Empire there was not only 
continuity, but an epoch of power under the 
sway of Justinian who more closely attached 
Italy to the Byzantine rule. 

As the West settled once more it was 
natural that Pope Gregory should send his 
mission to the England which two centuries 


ROMANESQUE ART 171 


before had been Britain, a part of the Empire 
and a province of the Church; thus the Rome 
of the clergy once more extended to the old 
limits. 

Architecturally, there were now three strains 
of style: the Christian Roman _ tradition, 
sadly broken; Byzantinism, ever more and 
more powerful in influence from the sixth to 
the tenth century; and the barbarian element 
in the blood and likings of the people. 

Until the coronation of Charlemagne the 
suzerainty of the Eastern emperors was 
acknowledged in Rome and throughout Italy. 
Ravenna and the south of the Peninsula 
remained attached to the East. The Byzan- 
tine genius at this time, say 500 to 800, so 
dominated the expression of the arts in Italy 
and the West that it would be well to call the 
style Byzanto-Romanesque or even Byzan- 
tesque. 

Cavaliere Rivoira, however, has gone over 
the ground with the object of showing that 
early Romanesque art in Italy derives directly 
from Rome, and he minimizes the influence 
of the East. His work has been valuable in 
bringing out the ‘variety and richness of 
Roman architecture, and in calling attention 
to many facts which had been overlooked, 
by a re-examination of the monuments. As 
I understand his work, his claim for the 
direct filiation of Romanesque architecture 


172 ARCHITECTURE 


from Roman applies almost entirely to con- 
struction. That there is a large Eastern ele- 
ment in the secondary forms, iconography 
and decoration, is not denied. It should be 
admitted that he has succeeded in carrying 
back to Roman days several ideas which had 
hitherto been thought to be Byzantine, and 
that he has shown that there was some con- 
tinuity from the Roman to the Romanesque 
styles. Still the main question seems to stand 
very much where it did. That a new spirit 
came in with the new decoration no one can 
doubt, nor that both were Oriental. The spirit 
is the transforming force. 

The Byzantesque, or primary Romanesque, 
style is only represented in Italy by a few 
monuments. In Gaul, at such centres as 
Lyons, Vienne, Poitiers, Tours, the arts 
would have been practised much as they were 
in Italy. In the south of France and Spain 
a school of considerable importance was 
formed in the Visigothic Kingdom, and there 
seems to be some evidence that the first 
vaulted churches built in the West were 
Visigothic. Another school was formed in 
England after about 600. 

Mature Romanesque art is Carlovingian— 
the style of the Holy Roman Empire—Lom- 
bardie and Frankish. Charlemagne en- 
deavoured successfully to form a culture 
centre in the heart of his great empire. The 


ROMANESQUE ART — 173 


palace-chapel he built at Aachen has a sixteen- 
sided outer wall surrounding a high central 
octagon; it is built of stone, the piers and 
doorways being of large blocks. Many of 
the details, especially the large western door, 
the remnants of which are now fully exposed 
previous to a restoration, were of late Roman 
type. The doorway has a wide stone archi- 
trave with a horizontal lintel of almost 
normal, late-classical section, and above the 
lintel is a semicircular relieving arch. The 
impost mouldings and cornices are classical. 
The capitals of the shafts are antique ones 
brought from Italy. The internal domical 
vault was covered with mosaics, doubtless by 
artists of the Byzantine school from Rome or 
Ravenna. There are some fine bronze railings 
forming the balustrade to the gallery story 
which surrounds the central area—these seem 
to be Byzantine, the doors are bronze, so also 
is a large fountain jet in the form of a pine 
cone. These last were doubtless made for 
the church, and are the first-fruits of the great 
bronze-working school of Germany. 

Ireland, little affected by the Germanic 
incursions, developed a limited school of art, 
especially in the decoration of books, with 
complicated knotted and spiral patterns which 
was not without effect on the Carlovingian 
school. On the other hand, the great Arab 
conquest of the seventh century must have 


174 ARCHITECTURE 


forced large numbers of eastern Christian 
artists from western Asia, Egypt and northern 
Africa into western Europe. Byzantine 
artists were easily obtained from Italy or 
from Constantinople itself. There was thus 
much crossing of artistic blood at this time. 

After Charlemagne many of the emperors 
were art patrons, and during the Romanesque 
period many great Churchmen were also 
great artists. At the beginning of the eleventh 
century lived Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, 
who formed a school of art in that city, where 
many of his works in bronze and precious 
metal remain. The famous bronze font at 
Liége, made by Ranerius of Huy early in the 
twelfth century, clearly derives from this 
school. It is a remarkable work, free, 
masterly and refined. Dunstan in England 
was an ecclesiastical artist of the type of 
Bernward. The monk Theophilus, who was 
expert in all the artistic crafts of the age and 
has left us an invaluable treatise on his 
practice, has been identified with Rugerius 
of Helmershausen, who was working about 
1100. 

Painting, ivory-carving, and enamelling were 
all highly developed in the German school. 
Mosaic floors were laid down, modelled 
stucco for figures and ornament was freely 
used, and the art of glass painting, it seems 
most likely from such evidence as is known, 


ROMANESQUE ART 175 


was invented or adopted from Byzantine art 
by German monastic craftsmen. 

From the evidence of carved _ ivories, 
painted books, enamels, and metal work, 
it appears that the great body of medizval 
symbolism in sacred imagery must have 
issued from the monastic workshops of 
Germany and Lotharingia. We find on these 
at an early time ideas which later were widely 
spread over medizval Europe, such as im- 
personations of the Church and the Synagogue. 
The Jesse tree also seems to have been in- 
vented (or handed on from the Eastern Church) 
by the German monastic artists. On the 
enamels of Godefried de Claire of Huy, working 
ec. 1140-70, we find the Crucifixion accom- 
panied by types out of the Old Testament so 
exactly like those which are well known in 
the stained-glass windows made from about 
the middle of the twelfth century up to about 
1220 that it is clear there must be some 
relation one way or the other. The medallion 
treatment of these windows seems to be 
derived from the tradition of enamel work, 
and it appears probable to the present writer 
that the windows at St. Denis, the earliest 
stained glass now in France, were designed 
by an artist of the same school as Godefried 
de Claire—perhaps by himself, for he was the 
most famous artist of the age. 

In building great things were done in 


176 ARCHITECTURE 


innumerable churches. These usually have 
their choirs lifted high above the nave, over 
vaulted crypts and reached by many steps. 
Frequently the west end as well as the east 
had an apse with an altar. Behind the high 
altar, in the centre of the choir, rose a colossal 
seven-branched candlestick of bronze; in 
the nave was a large corona of lamps which 
nearly filled the space from side to side. 
The walls and vaults were entirely covered 
with paintings—Christ or the Virgin attended 
by angels or apostles in the conch of the 
apse, and Bible stories in many bands on the 
walls. The exteriors had several towers; 
usually there was a pair to the east as well 
as a pair to the west, the space between the 
western towers was often carried up much 
higher than the rest of the nave, making with 
the towers an important Western work which 
is very characteristic of these churches. In 
Cologne, a chief centre in the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries, the Church of St. Mary in 
the Capitol, dedicated in 1049, has fine apses 
surrounded by ambulatories to the ends of the 
transepts as well as the central apse, which 
is also surrounded by an ambulatory. This 
is a very noble and impressive interior, the 
prototype of many medieval churches. The 
most remarkable German Romanesque chureh 
is St. Gereon at Cologne. This has a large 
polygonal body, from each side of which, 


ROMANESQUE ART 177 


except to the east and the west, opens a large 
apsidal niche in the thickness of the wall, and 
above these is formed a gallery. At the east 
is a long vaulted presbytery, to the west a 
big porch, and the central part rises high as a . 
tower. It is a late Romanesque work, but 
it has been thought that the body with its 
niches is probably built over Roman founda- 
tions; a recent examination has convinced me 
that it is homogeneous in design. We find 
similar apsed niches in the Apostles’ Church 
at Cologne, and the polygonal body with a 
gallery story seems to be adapted from 
Charlemagne’s church at Aachen. 

Altogether this building style was magni- 
ficent and complete; in Germany it competed 
long with the newer Gothic type of design 
developed in France at the end of the twelfth 
century. 

In North Italy a noble school of mature 
Romanesque architecture flourished at this 
same time. This ‘ Lombard art ”’ was closely 
linked with that of Germany, but the Italian 
element in the population, the example of 
many antique monuments, contact with the 
Kast through Venice and Pisa, and the com- 
mand of marbles as building material, gave 
it special characteristics. One curious and 
typical feature in Lombardie architecture is 
the setting of shafts at doorways on_ lions. 


It is found, I believe, in late Roman work, and 
M 


178 ARCHITECTURE 


the fashion would seem to have been brought 
from Assyria. ‘This base is occasionally found 
in Germany, as, for instance, the base of the 
central pillar of the old cathedral porch at 
Goslar. There is a small and imperfect 
application of the idea at the south nave door 
of Ely Cathedral. In Italy and Germany it 
was usual to group the columns of the nave 
between square piers. It has been suggested 
that it was because at first they used old 
marble columns and that possibly they were 
scarce; but it fell in with a general tendency 
to form groups, and seems to have been de- 
rived from the East (see fig. 30). 

In France and Spain other fine schools of 
Romanesque art were formed. The condi- 
tions varied from centre to centre; here the 
Germanic re-barbarization was less complete, 
there Roman monuments had greater in- 
fluence; here, again, the current of Byzantine 
art flowed more freely, or there was direct 
contact with the Arabs. 

Nearly everywhere one element in the style 
is an attempt to imitate the details of Roman 
monuments—monuments which were often 
very late and divergent from the classical 
type. Thus in the museum at Sens there are 
large fragments of a late Roman work carved 
redundantly with vine ornamentation, and 
such prototypes were readily caught up in 
the advancing style. The important question 


ROMANESQUE ART 179 


in the arts is, Are they developing or degrad- 
ing? If they are expanding, hints from 
the most diverse sources will be gathered 
and recast according to the genius of the 
time. 

In south-east France successful attempts 
were made to vault churches entirely. The 
experiments followed two types—continuous 
barrel vaults, as Notre Dame du Port at 
Clermont, or a series of domes, as at Peri- 
gueux. Both these types are ultimately of 
Eastern origin (see p. 43), but the barrel- 
vault type may have been taken over from 
the Visigothic school, while the domical type 
was more immediately adopted from Con- 
stantinople and the East. Vaulting with domes 
spread far north, so that the aisles of the 
abbey church of Bernay (ec. 1030) are covered 
with domes; at the small church of St. George, 
close to Tours, there is a little dome remain- 
ing, and doubtless Bernay derived its domed 
vaulting from Tours. There was at one time 
considerable chance that we should have had 
a, domed architecture in the North-west. The 
form finally adopted was the groined vault— 
that is, one which shows an arch in both 
directions, so that the windows in the side 
walls might rise nearly as high as the vault 
itself. 

In the eleventh century one of the schools 
of building which rapidly developed was that 


180 ARCHITECTURE 


in Normandy; step by step the growing power 
of the Duchy was reflected in cathedral and 
abbey churches, and still more in the vast 
military castle-towers of which the Tower of 
London is a fine example. It seems to have 
had its prototype in the “ Tower ” of Rouen. 
Were these donjon towers contrived by the 
Conqueror himself? Norman architecture 
in its advance must have gathered largely 
from the Southern schools; at St. Nicholas, 
Caen, the bracketed eaves cornice might be 
at Issoire or Le Puy. The banding and 
chequering of two different coloured stones, 
a favourite device in Norman masonry, 
is Southern rather than German. The final 
type of plan in which an ambulatory and 
chapels surround the apse was derived from 
Tours. , 

Among the contributions made to archi- 
tecture in the Romanesque period the first 
place must be given to the perfecting of the 
Cathedral plan, and, indeed, of its whole 
constructive type. The builders of after 
years had only to refine it to find themselves 
on the verge of Gothic. The problems of 
vaulting were worked out to the point where 
it became the controlling factor in the scheme. 
Ribbed vaulting, a great architectural power, 
was either invented by the Romanesque 
builders or developed from some Eastern 
source. The disposition of towers was tried 


ROMANESQUE ART 181 


in every possible combination, and the stone 
spire was evolved. Some of the most perfect 
types were erected in the earliest Gothic 
days. 

Successful attempts at dome construction 
were made over Italian baptisteries and some 
of the churches of France and Spain. On 
these cupolas the lantern appears which 
became a regular feature of the Renaissance 
dome. The cupolas over the baptisteries of 
Pisa and Florence are remarkable structural 
triumphs. That at Pisa reverts to the tall 
conical form of the Eastern cupolas. Wren’s 
structural cone at St. Paul’s resembles its 
form so closely that it would seem that in 
his preliminary studies he had found an 
account of the Pisan baptistery. The cupola 
at Florence is strengthened by a series of 
buttressing walls, which rise at right angles 
resting on the cupola and support an outer 
pyramid of masonry which is cased over 
with marble slabs like paving. It is an 
admirable and homogeneous piece of con- 
struction. On the apex the lantern sheltered 
an open eye in the cupola. This is the proto- 
type of the lanterns of Renaissance domes, 
their ultimate source is the hood over the 
ventilator of early Eastern mud domes (fig. 
15). 

The general methods of the application 
of sculpture to structures was worked out 


182 ARCHITECTURE | 


and most of the types of images and stories 
were introduced. Stained glass was _ per- 
fected. The windows which were wrought in 
the middle of the twelfth century are more 
perfect than any others. 


CHAPTER XI 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 


AutTuoucH the Saxon and Norman styles 
of architecture were contemporary with the 
Romanesque art of the Continent it seems 
desirable to deal with them particularly. The 
study of both the Saxon and Norman periods 
of Romanesque art in England has been 
neglected. If we had a comprehensive and 
fully illustrated account of our early art, it 
would be seen that it is for us of extraordinary 
interest and had much of great beauty. 

The Romans must have left many churches 
in our country, like the one whose foundations — 
were uncovered in 1892 at Silchester. After 
the beginning of the seventh century Christian 
churches were erected once more all over the 
land. This was at the time when Byzantine 
traditions were strong in Rome and through- 
out western Europe. The churches generally 
were more or less basilican in type, either with 
or without aisles according to their size; they 
would have an apse at the east end and an 


atrium court at the west. At the close of the 
183 


184 ARCHITECTURE 


seventh century St. Wilfrid built at Hexham 
a church in the form of a round tower with 
four arms; and at Athelney King Alfred built 
another in the shape of a cross with rounded 
ends—that is, a quatrefoilin plan. The abbey 
church at Abingdon, erected in 675, was 
120 feet long, and rounded at the west end as 
well as at the east. The old cathedral of 
Canterbury also had this form. It has been 
assumed that this church was at first built 
with an apse to the west, in the early Roman 
manner, by St. Augustine, and that the eastern 
apse was built at a later time “to turn the 
church around,’’? when the eastern direction 
had become customary. This type of plan 
may first have arisen in this way; but many 
churches of this form existed in an early time 
in North Africa, and the cathedral of Canter- 
bury may either have been built at first of this 
form, or Augustine’s church may have been 
entirely rebuilt subsequently. In any case 
Abingdon was erected on this plan, and so 
was the great church of St. Gall in Switzer- 
land, and many later ones in Germany and 
France. 

A plan drawn in the ninth century of the 
church at St. Gall, which shows this form, 
is preserved; it has been doubted whether it 
was actually built like this plan, but Addison, 
who saw the church before it was destroyed, 
seems to describe it so. Possibly the type 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 185 


may have been introduced from England by 
some of the early missionaries to Germany. 
Up to about 900, Saxon architecture would 
have been in the main based on early Christian 
and Byzantine examples, after that time a 
Carlovingian influence from the empire would 
set in. Already, during the early period, a form 
of braided and knotted decoration (fig. 34) 
was practised in book decoration and in stone 
carving; the same type of ornamentation is 
known all over Christendom in the eighth and 
ninth centuries, and in Rome itself much 
work of the sort is found. In Saxon England 
these patterns seem to appear at a very early 
date, and they were worked out in infinite 
varieties of complexity. It seems likely that 
there must be some special cause for this, and 
as very similar patterns appear in Coptic MSS. 
it is possible that some special Eastern strain 
was brought in by early monks, possibly in 
the time of Theodore the Archbishop, who was 
an Oriental. Some of the carvings of this 
type, with which the vine is associated, as on 
fragments of crosses in the library of Durham 
Cathedral, are of extraordinary beauty, and 
cannot be matched, so far as I know, anywhere 
else in Europe. Another mystery in regard 
to these crosses is the figure sculpture with 
which some of them are adorned. The great 
cross still standing at Bewcastle, and another 
at Ruthwell, are adorned with figure sculptures 


186 ARCHITECTURE 


of Christ standing on the dragon, of the flight 
into Egypt, and of other biblical scenes, which 
are most remarkable in the history of medizval 
sculpture if the crosses are (and there seems to 
be little room for doubt) as early as they are 
said to be. Rivoira, without arguing the 
proofs for an early age, assigns them to the 
twelfth century, when figure sculpture in stone 
was becoming common in Europe. It may 
be remarked that these sculptures a good deal 
resemble those of early ivories, and I can only 
suggest that a fashion arose here of carving 
these crosses like ivories. After the time of 
Charlemagne the new school of German 
Romanesque must have strongly influenced 
our Saxon architecture. The abbey church 
of Ramsay, built 968-74, was cruciform, with 
a central tower and a smaller one at the west 
end. Winchester Cathedral, built in 980, 
probably had the same form. It had a crypt, 
a fine tower with a weathercock, and a 
vestibule. It has been suggested that a 
view of the church appears in the background 
of one of the illuminations of the Benedictional 
of St. Ethelwold, its builder. The churches 
at Athelney and Hexham, mentioned above, 
must have been very interesting examples of 
the central type of plan. 

The noble eleventh-century (?) Church of the 
Holy Cross at Quimperlé in Brittany is a later 
and much larger example of the central form, 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 187 


and possibly the last of the type built in 
western Europe. Of Saxon churches existing 
wholly or in part, several have apses. That 
of the church at Wing is seven-sided, not 
rounded, and is thus Eastern rather than 
Roman. St. Frideswide, Oxford, had three 
parallel apses. Many fine towers exist, of 
which that at Barnack is the most beautiful. 
This retains a precious little window of an 
early type, having a braided lattice pierced 
in a thin slab of stone. 

On the plan of the church of St. Gall the 
towers are shown as circular in plan, like the 
earlier towers at Ravenna. The early church 
at St. Riquier in north France also had circular 
towers. The church at Abingdon which 
we have mentioned is described in the tenth 
century as having a round tower. The 
well-known round towers of Ireland belong - 
to the same tradition. The famous leaning 
tower of Pisa is a late and ornate member of 
the same family. 

One curious type of plan was that in which, 
as Mr. Micklethwaite put it, the tower “itself 
is the body of the church,” a small addition 
to the east made a chancel; or there might 
be two extensions, one to the east and the 
other to the west. The church of Barton-on- 
Humber, where the large Saxon tower and the 
western extension remain, was of this type. 
Several Norman churches (notably Ifiley) 


188 ARCHITECTURE 


which have only one span, with a tower cover- 
ing the space in front of the presbytery, follow 
the same tradition. In the centrally planned 
churches the central dome or tower might 
very well come to represent the church itself. 
According to Enlart, the central tower of a 
church was sometimes called domus are in 
early French texts. It seems possible that 
when the eleventh-century description of the 
Confessor’s church at Westminster begins by 
saying that the domus are was very high it 
refers to the lantern tower rather than to the 
presbytery as is usually supposed. 

Several of the Saxon churches which prob- 
ably belong to the eleventh century have rude 
little pilaster-strips at intervals; these seem 
to be derived from the German churches, many 
of which have such strips at the angles and at 
intervals, but much more systematically done 
than the English work. The tower of Somp- 
ting church has four gables in German fashion. 
Again, the mid-wall shaft with corbel capital 
spreading to the thickness of the wall is also 
a German, and ultimately a Byzantine, feature. 
Two flying angels carved over the chancel arch 
of the church at Bradford-on-Avon have their 
hands veiled in a manner often found in 
Byzantine art of the eleventh century. To 
the same age probably belongs the fine stone 
crucifix at Romsey Abbey. We may suppose 
that it occupied a place on the west gable of 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 189 


the church similar to the defaced crucifix over 
the west door of the church of Headbourn- 
worthy, not far away. 

A very large number of carved stone crosses, 
grave-slabs and fonts, as well as an endless 
number of fragments, exist which belong to 
the Saxon period. The Alfred Jewel, and other 
examples of goldsmiths’ work, the coins, the 
embroideries from St. Cuthbert’s coffin at 
Durham, and many wonderful painted books, 
all show that in Saxon days ; 
we had here a fine school of 
art maintaining close touch 
with what was done on the 
Continent. Many carved 
stones which show a cruder 
and more savage type of 
art are largely Danish and 
Norse, similar types are found in Scandinavia. 

The quatrefoil early appears in Saxon work, 
and it became such a favourite form that one 
is tempted to consider it a Saxon contribution 
to Kuropean art. The quatrefoil was a cross 
with rounded ends, and the form was used in 
early Christian fonts. It first appears in the 
west on the coins of Offa, 757-96. It occurs 
as a frame for little subjects on the Winchester 
embroideries, c. 912, now at Durham, and 
from the tenth century it is frequently found 
in the decorations of English MSS. By the 
eleventh century it seems to have been adopted 





190 ARCHITECTURE 


into building, for windows and loopholes of 
this form appear in the illuminations of MSS., 
and on the Bayeux tapestry, which is almost 
certainly an English work (fig.- 89). 

The trefoil arch also makes an early and 
prominent appearance in Anglo-Saxon works. 
It occurs on the Missal of Jumiéges, written 
in nit about 1015 (fig. 40), and, curi- 
ously, the earliest regular 
trefoil arches I know of 
in Norman buildings 
us| were those over some 

- ‘windows in the destroyed 
| Salle des Chevaliers at 
(4 Jumiéeges. Trefoil arches 
are also represented on 
44 the Bayeux tapestry 
(fig. 39). In English 
~ buildings the trefoil is 

found on the side door 
of Ely Cathedral, and over some sculptured 
panels of the twelfth century at Lincoln. 
Fig. 41 is a doorway from the east of France. 

A remarkable example is the early Gothic 
west door of Byland Abbey. The question 
arises whether the trefoil arch is a variety of 
the Arab lobed arch discussed above, or 
whether it originated independently in the 
West as half a quatrefoil. On Saracenic 
ivories foiled forms are frequently found, and, 
on the whole, I am disposed to think that the 





Bia. 40. 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 191 


foiled arch and the foiled circle are Eastern 
features. A remarkable example of the tre- 
foil-arch is found in the thirteenth-century 
porches of Bourges Cathedral; here the 
bottom lobes are complete, as in Moorish 
arches. Still farther north, at Tournay, I 
have seen two doorways with trefoil arches 
which are distinctly Saracenic. 

A strong Saracenic element was absorbed 
into Western art in the early Middle Ages. 
The bringing over of Arabic numerals is an 
example of what may have 
happened in the arts. The 
most marked instance of Arab 
influence is furnished by the 
imitation of Cufic writing as 
decoration, a fashion which 
obtained all over Christendom LIGREN 
in the eleventh and twelfth ~ fF. 4. 
centuries. The carved wooden 
doors of Le Puy are famous because of it, and 
the ornament appears in English twelfth- 
century decorations of MSS. A sharp, crisp 
type of carving which spread over the West 
about the middle of the twelfth century seems 
to have been imitated from Saracenic ivories. 
The pointed arch, as already said, was adopted 
from the East, so also was the building of arches 
in recessed orders with nook-shafts in the 
jambs. Interlacing arches, which became 
such a favourite feature in Norman archi- 








192 ARCHITECTURE 


tecture, are found ina highly developed form 
at Cordova in the ninth century. They 
appear first in the north as ornamentation 
drawn in Saxon books from about A.p. 800. 

The cusped arch, or rather the lobed arch— 
for we may have to make a distinction if the 
bottom lobe is complete, or if it springs as a 
cusp—certainly originated in the East (fig. 
29). It was extensively used at Cordova, and 
was taken up into the Romanesque building 
of the south-east of France. Then it strongly 
affected the German school, and passed to 
Normandy and England. Small lobed arches 
are found on the facade of Ely Cathedral. 
Spire design in the West was probably in- 
fluenced to some degree in its development by 
the Eastern minaret. The masonry strongly 
banded together in two colours, which was so 
popular in Italy, may have had an Eastern 
origin. Patterns of Eastern stuffs were exten- 
sively copiedin Western paintings and carvings. 
The painted ceiling of Peterborough Cathedral 
looks like an imitation of an Eastern rug. Zig- 
zag ornamentation is likely to have been first 
copied from Oriental fabrics. It is almost a 
general rule that carved decoration imitated 
painted ornament. Thus the “‘ tabernacle,”’ 
which became a highly important architectural 
feature throughout the Middle Ages, first 
appears in painted books as a frame with an 
arched top and indications of building above. 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 198 


It showed that the action of the picture was 
within doors. 

The Norman form of Romanesque was 
introduced into England when Edward the 
Confessor rebuilt Westminster Abbey from 
about 1050 to 1066. Chroniclers say that no 
church like it had before been seen. Some 
years ago I suggested that it was probably 
copied from the Abbey of Jumiéges, and 
further research has proved this to be the case. 
It seems probable that the king brought 
masons from Normandy to build it. The 
church was cruciform, with aisles to the nave 
and presbytery, which had two bays, and an 
apse. The side aisles were also terminated 
by apses. Over the crossing was a high tower. 
The aisles, and probably the central span as 
well, were vaulted. At the west end was a 
“ vestibule.”? The abbey church at Jumiéges 
had been begun in 1040. In its turn it had 
followed the type of the church at Bernay, 
begun about 1020. This fine early church, in 
a little decayed town half-way between Rouen 
and Caen, is now used as a corn store, but it is 
a most important monument for the history of 
northern architecture. It is cruciform, and 
had three apses, which are destroyed. 

_ The three churches just described—Bernay, 
Jumiéges, Westminster—were planned with 
parallel apses. A new and splendid type of 
plan, in which the apse is built on columns, 
<é | 


194 ARCHITECTURE 


and thus opened out to a surrounding 
ambulatory, was brought into England at 
Canterbury and Winchester about 1075, The 
early Norman churches frequently had 
galleries in the transepts supported on vaults 
at the height of the aisle vaults. This was 
so at Jumiéges, Westminster, Canterbury, and 
probably at Lincoln and elsewhere. This 
scheme brought columns into the spaces be- 
tween the great crossing piers centrally in 
front of each transept; that is, the nave 
arcade was continued across the transepts. 
This may have given rise to the alternation 
of piers and columns frequently found in nave 
arcades, or it may have confirmed the tendency 
to form groups (see above, p. 146). The 
transeptal gallery must have been a remarkable 
feature. Sometimes it was reduced to fill a 
single bay at the end of each of the transepts. 
The triforium story was often formed into a 
gallery having a second vaulted roof, being 
lighted by a tier of windows above the aisle 
windows. 

The vestibule at the west front was an 
important feature at this time. It is men- 
tioned, as we have seen, in the description 
of Ethelwold’s church at Winchester, built 
c. 980, and also at Westminster, built c. 1050. 
At Ely and Bury St. Edmunds the western 
bays of the churches were treated separately 
from the nave. Over the centre stood, in 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 195 


each case, a large western tower, beneath which 
was the entrance; that is, the base of the tower 
formed a great porch. This western bay was 
also extended north and south of the general 
width of the church, thus giving a very wide 
and important facade. At Winchester, too, 
the Norman church, built c. 1080, had a similar 
central western tower. At Lincoln Cathedral 
the western bay probably formed a fine 
vestibule. Tewkesbury Abbey has some indi- 
cations of a similar disposition. At Peter- 
borough the cathedral was begun with a 
vestibule, but before the west front was built 
the fashion had passed away, and it was 
modified into an enormous open western 
porch. Westminster, as built by the Con- 
fessor, seems to have had two western towers. 
At Exeter two great towers stand over the 
transepts. 

Some of these Norman churches were 
entirely vaulted. The early description of 
the Confessor’s church at Westminster sug- 
gested that it may have had high central vaults 
as well as vaulted aisles. The Conqueror’s 
small chapel in the White Tower is wholly 
vaulted. The apse and probably the whole 
presbytery at St. Albans were covered by 
vaults. The nave of Lincoln Cathedral was 
vaulted from 1141. Durham Cathedral, 
designed about 1090, appears to have been 
prepared for vaulting throughout, and here 


196 ARCHITECTURE 


the aisle vaults, built about 1095, have ribs. 
These may have been the earliest vaults with 
regular diagonal ribs ever erected in western 
Kurope. The type became the characteristic 
vault of Gothic architecture, and only a few 
years ago ribbed vaulting was thought to be 
a special mark of the Gothic style. 

At Quimperlé in Brittany the centre of the 
round church is sustained by four large piers, 
and the middle space is covered by a vault 
having four diagonal arches. It has been 
rebuilt, but there seems to be little doubt 
that it follows the old form. At Bayeux 
Cathedral, dedicated 1077, the space below the 
north-west tower is vaulted on two arches 
crossing from the centre of the sides, not from 
the angles. Both these seem to be earlier 
than the vaults at Durham; and at Montefias- 
cone in Italy are some ribbed vaults which 
Rivoira claims to have been built in 1032. 
At Zara in Dalmatia is a vault on diagonal 
ribs which by an inscription is dated 1105. 
There are columns in the angles and “‘ from the 
capitals spring two heavy diagonal ribs of 
plain squared stone underlying a vault which 
is almost a dome in construction.” 

It is curious that from the first introduction 
of ribbed vaulting into England, there was a 
tendency to divide the apse vault into three 
compartments by two ribs abutting against 
the centre of the arch. It was so at Durham. 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 197 


The early crypt under the south transept at 
Christchurch has such ribs in the apse and 
not elsewhere. So has the old Norman 
church at Birkin, Yorkshire. This fact, taken 
together with others, may dispose us to think 
that the ultimate source for ribbed vaults 
was from Eastern ribbed domes, although the 
more general supposition is that they were 
first used under the intersections of cross- 
vaults. 

At the end of the eleventh century there 
was a fashion in church-building to dispose 
stones of two or more colours in patterns. 
The dormitory at Westminster, Worcester 
Cathedral, and Exeter Cathedral had alternate 
layers in parts of the interior like piers and 
arches. The tympana of the triforium arches 
at Chichester have three or more colours 
arranged in patterns. 

The interiors of the great Norman churches 
were fully painted with scenes, figures and 
patterns. At St. Albans, high up on 
the choir walls, are some big figures, and the 
arches are covered with bands and zigzags. 
At Canterbury one crypt chapel still retains 
its entire scheme, covering walls, vaults and 
pillars. At Ely, Chichester, Romsey and 
other places there are fragments from which 
a general scheme may be imagined. A 
church was not properly finished, at any time, 
until it was painted; and these Norman 


198 ARCHITECTURE 


churches inherited much of the Byzantine 
custom of making the interior into a great 
painted Bible. Doorways and other parts 
of the exterior were also frequently painted. 
Figure sculpture was not in general use until 
the end of the twelfth century. The door- 
way at Rochester, and the band of sculpture 
on the west front of Lincoln, can hardly be 
earlier than about 1170. 

These mighty Norman churches when fresh 
from the hands of the various artists who built 
and adorned them must have been very 
marvellous works of art. 

English Norman building was in the very 
front of the advance of architecture leading 
up to the Gothic, although in the actual 
achievement we fell behind. More great 
churches were built in England between 1066 
and 1150 than anywhere else. Ribbed vault- 
ing, during this time, became much more 
common in English churches than on the 
Continent, and several other features were 
developed here. I may instance the fine 
circular chapter house at Worcester; at 
Woodstock there was also a circular chapel, 
and a small one still exists at Ludlow Castle. 
This tradition seems to have led up to the 
characteristic English Chapter house, no 
parallel to which is to be found abroad. 
Round churches were built by others than 
Templars—for example, the round church at 


SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 199 


Cambridge, and St. John’s, Clerkenwell. Inter- 
lacing arcades were also highly developed here. 
There is a remarkable example in the wall 
arcading at Castle Rising, and at Romsey 
there is a triforium opening filled with inter- 
lacing arches in which the builders had really 
anticipated the invention of bar tracery, if 
they had only known it. 


CHAPTER XII 


GOTHIC BUILDING IN FRANCE—THE ARCHI- 
TECTURE OF ENERGY 


Tuer form of medizval society in Western 
Christendom was perfected in the thirteenth 
century. This was the great age of theological 
philosophy, of monastic expansion, of the 
organization of town communities, craft- 
guilds and universities, as well as of artistic 
fruition. A little earlier society was violent 
and architecture inchoate, a little later the 
forces of disruption appeared and romantic 
Gothic was to give way to merchant Gothic. 

The architecture of the right moment 
answers in the most extraordinary way to 
our general ideas regarding the time; it isa 
crystallization of the Age of Romance. 

The early part of the twelfth century was 
a time of great architectural ferment when 
several of the Romanesque schools of art 
seem to have started out in conscious rivalry 
to race for the lead. The school of the Ie 
de France took the first place about 1125, 


and Paris soon became the centre of medizval 
200 


FRENCH GOTHIC 201 


thought and art—the culture capital of Europe. 
Out of the intense furnace of ideas was to 
run the pure gold of a new style which is 
probably the most original of all theories of 
building. It is impossible to explain in words 
the content of perfect Gothic art. It is 
frank, clear, gay; it is passionate, mystical 
and tender; it is energetic, clear, sharp, 
strong and healthy. It would be a mistake 
to try to define it in terms of form alone; 
it embodied a spirit, an aspiration, an age. 
The ideals of the time of energy and order 
produced a manner of building of high in- 
tensity, all waste tissue was thrown off, and 
the stonework was gathered up into energetic 
functional members. These ribs and bars 
and shafts are all at bowstring tension. A 
mason will tap a pillar to make its stress 
audible; we may think of a cathedral as so 
“high strung” that if struck it would give 
a musical note. 

The ground plan of a cathedral was slowly 
developed by ceaseless experiment in adjust- 
ing the parts so as to obtain maximum eflfici- 
ency. A large French chevet in which a 
group of five or seven chapels stand about 
the central apse is a triumph of art—a 
perfect thing. A plan is the foundation and 
-key of the whole construction. The enjoy- 
ment of a plan is an aptitude which will hardly 
come without considerable comparative study, 


202 ARCHITECTURE 


but the expert finds in it the theme and plot 
of a whole drama of building. 

Churches of the first class in the thirteenth 
century were built to be covered by stone 
vaults, which vaults were membered—that 
is, made up of stronger supporting ribs and 
thinner webs filling between them; each 
‘bay’? or compartment being a sort of 
stone pavilion. These radiating ribs gathered 
up the weight and thrust at given points 
above tall and slender supports. The plan- 
ning was thus the resultant of a sum of 
several exigencies. The site gave one con- 
dition, the size another, the necessities of 
_ vaulted construction a third, lighting another, 
and soon. Now, especially in a stone-covered 
church, the width may not be increased too 
recklessly, whereas the addition of length is 
easy. Yet obviously an interior may not be 
drawn out into too long a tunnel. Lateral 
annexes may, however, be added, especially 
opposite a central point, and such transepts 
not only increase the volume of the building, 
but, standing in opposition to the long central 
vault, they form supports to it. That this 
constructive expedient should also contain 
a symbol was a reason for the universality 
of the great cruciform church type. The 
long rows of arcades which support the vaults 
gather up a thrust against the outer end walls. 
It thus became reasonable to place towers at 


FRENCH GOTHIC __208 


the west front, the external termination of 
the longest ranks. At the east end the wall, 
turning in an apse, forms a kind of horizontal 
arch resisting expansion from within. Great 
churches frequently have towers also at the 
transept ends. The plan of a church was a 
thing strictly conditioned. Up to a point in 
architectural history, the planning of great 
churches, as has been said, was a matter of 
experiment, of adjustment and development 
within narrow boundaries, and the solution 
found was practical, geometrical and tradi- 
tional. 

This is true equally of the whole structure; 
a great church was not an essay in “ design ”’ 
for the satisfaction of “‘ taste,’’ it had been 
developed organically, and in the earlier time 
especially the organism was sound. When 
we speak of organic architecture, of active 
stonework and balance of forces, we have 
most in mind the medizval masons’ daring 
use of the arch as a means of construction. 
The arch at its simplest is a wonderful con- 
trivance; it is a bow always tending to expand. 
If you bend a piece of cane into an arch be- 
tween two piles of books, the books have to 
be heavy enough or they will be pushed 
asunder by the elastic bow. An arch is 
perfectly safe, and, indeed, inactive, as long 
as it is imprisoned, but let the restraining 
forces be an ounce too little and it will break 


; 


204 ARCHITECTURE 


out like water through too weak a dam, and 
a moving arch is as terrible as a flood. The 
medieval builders, when they had found 
their theory of construction, did not lock 
up their arches in great masses of masonry, 
like the Roman architects, but they set arch 
to fight arch, until two, four, eight or a dozen 
were balanced on one slender pier. They 
cross like the jets from a fountain, and spread 
Jike the branches of great trees so that old 
writers really thought that the architecture 
had been suggested by avenues in a wood. 

The branching arches of the high vault 
were constantly exercising an expanding 
pressure against the walls of the clerestory, 
which themselves were suspended above the 
tall arches of the interior. To counter- 
balance this other arches were built in the 
open air, reaching up from the low side walls 
of the outer aisles and forming props to the 
central span. These flying buttresses, as 
they have been well called, were surely an 
extraordinary invention. In many French 
churches there are two tiers of these, which 
spring from tall, heavy pinnacles. 

The design of the superstructure of a great 
church was conceived as a problem in equili- | 
brium. The builders made an effort to do all 
that might be done in stone, and the possi- 
bilities of rearing stones one upon another 
were explored to the utmost. The structure, 


FRENCH GOTHIC 205 


as Morris has well put it, became organic. 
This was the law of growth in Gothic archi- 
tecture. 

The conception of a building as made up 
of an inert enclosing wall, pierced with holes 
for light, and with a roof quietly resting on 
it like a lid, the ruling data for many a noble 
building of other days, gave place to the 
thought of a structure which should be con- 
tinuous throughout, and energetic in every 
part. The wall gathered itself up into tense 
shafts and piers, from which branched the 
ribs of the vault; the windows spread, to 
occupy the whole curtain of wall between 
the shafts, and in doing so almost inevitably 
became many-mullioned and traceried; the 
body thus became all post and space, a cage 
of stone. 

From another point of view a Gothic 
cathedral may be compared to a great cargo- 
ship which has to attain to a balance between 
speed and safety. The church and the ship 
were both designed in the same way by a 
slow perfecting of parts; all was effort acting 
on custom, beauty was mastery, fitness, size 
with economy of material. Originality was 
insight for the essential and the inevitable. 
Proportion was the result of effort and train- 
ing, it was the discovered law of structure, 
and it may be doubted if there be any other 
basis for proportion than the vitalizing of 


206 ARCHITECTURE 


necessity. Nothing great or true in build- 
ing seems to have been invented in the sense 
of wilfully designed. Beauty seems to be 
to art as happiness to conduct—it should 
come by the way, it will not yield itself to 
direct attacks. | | 

A noble building, indeed any work of 
art, is not the product of an act of design 
by some individual genius, it is the outcome 
of ages of experiment. The essence of a 
Gothic cathedral is its structure, not its 
adornments, though never so beautiful. A 
ship, like a cathedral, was decorated, but the 
ornament is not necessary to either, it is a 
gift over and above. The great ship had 
a colossal figurehead, luxuriance of scrolly 
carving around the poop, extravagance of 
gilding, and profusion of fluttering flags. 
The cathedral had much wealth of sculptures, 
paintings, stained glass, embroideries, gold 
and silver treasure. These things, it is true, 
were a part of the means of teaching and of 
ritual tradition, but they do not make up 
the essential cathedral. In one sense they 
were merely superadded, like the music and 
incense; in another, it is true, they themselves 
furnished real data to the builders. Thus a 
cathedral, in one aspect, was a stone shrine 
made with enamels of storied glass, in another 
it had to provide great stone avenues for 
stately processions, in which the whispering 


FRENCH GOTHIC 207 


and wailing organ might speak, and the cloud 
of incense might ascend. The cathedral 
satisfied all these conditions and others, and the 
response to noble requirements became a part 
of its own loveliness. Yet, as the ship beneath 
the bunting was a balanced structure of wood, 
and as the effort was always to get the utmost 
result from given means, so the great cathedral 
was a balanced structure of stone which found 
its perfected form at the limits where men 
could do no more. Thus it was that a cathe- 
dral was not designed, but discovered, or 
*‘ revealed.”’ Indeed building has been found 
out—like speech, writing, the use of metals— 
hence a noble architecture is not a thing of 
will, of design, of scholarship. A true archi- 
tecture is the discovery of the nature of things 
in building, a continuous development along 
some line of direction imposed by needs, 
desires and traditions. 

We used to be told that Gothic architecture 
was largely the result of the East acting on 
the West, mainly through the Crusades ; 
Wren thought it should be called Saracenic. 
It has been the intermediate fashion to 
discard large views, and to work at particular 
areas and details, but it is probable that we 
shall have to come back a little way towards 
the earlier position. We have already spoken 
of the transmission of Eastern forms to the 
West in and before the twelfth century. 


208 ARCHITECTURE 


Much of the romance spirit which underlies 
the literature and art of the early Middle 
Ages seems to have been born of contact with 
the East; and the development of the Saracen 
schools of art was so parallel with those of 
the West that it seems probable, as Prof. 
Petrie has suggested, that both belong to the 
same great cycle. 

In all, and behind all forms, Gothie art 
is a spirit, the expression of “an energy of 
the soul,’ and the art refuses to be driven 
as a whole under the yoke of any single 
formula. Attempts are frequently being made 
to measure it by “ definition,” and the art 
is relentlessly cut down where it does not 
fit this foot-rule, but such attempts are a 
mere logical pitfall. 

In 1140 the abbey church of St. Denis, a 
few miles from Paris, was begun, and it was 
pushed forward to completion in a few years. 
Here the way which was to be followed by 
subsequent builders seems to have been 
found. It is the first building which we 
may properly call Gothic. The noble 
cathedrals of Paris, Chartres and Laon soon 
followed; then the mighty culminating group 
of Amiens, Bourges, Beauvais and Reims 
were built, and a host of other churches, 
smaller, but hardly less lovely. 

The Gothic ‘style’? was of course not 
merely a manner used for churches alone. 


FRENCH GOTHIC 209 


The castles, town-walls and gates, bridges 
and houses, were no less Gothic; sculpture, 
painting, stained glass, were all members of 
the one art. 

With the fourteenth century came over- 
elaboration and formalism. In the fifteenth 
century much of the work done was ex- 
tremely artificial and yet it was done with 
such enjoyment that it was still fresh and 
alive when in the sixteenth century it withered 
up in face of a fashion of building brought in 
by the Court from Italy. 

Among the chief gifts of the great French 
Gothic school to the world of architecture 
was, first of all, the theory of energetic con- 
struction, by which a cathedral became a 
stone cage with films of stained glass suspended 
in the voids, a marvellous jewelled lantern. 
The most characteristic single feature is the 
traceried window which sustains this stained 
glass in thin bars of stone, vertical below, 
and branching in the arch-spaces into inter- 
lacing curves. The flying buttress is also a 
highly specialized power in this architecture. 
The intimate association of sculpture with 
the building should be mentioned; especially 
in the series of deep-linked porches with their 
great statues, lesser imagery and_ foliage. 
The spire was developed into a most remark- 
able feature. Only by building stone roofs 
- at a very steep angle can the rain be resisted, 

fe) 


210 ARCHITECTURE 


and it is desirable to hang bells high in the 
air so that they may speak far. These were 
the mechanical justifications for high steeples, 
but the rearing of tall landmarks was, of 
course, a manifestation of power and pride. 
Moreover, they fall in with the most marked 
zesthetic delight of the medizval builders— 
delight in acute or intricate forms silhouetted 
against the sky. These spires were pierced 
through and through with belfry lights and 
foiled openings, and set about with skeleton 
pinnacles, so that the most astonishing effects 
result when they are seen in sunlight against 
‘blue sky, or all grey in the late evening. 
Tracery, pierced parapets, pinnacles, crockets, 
‘* tabernacles,”’ all show a similar liking for 
open work seen against the sky. Every 
medieval town at a distance showed a 
fretwork of towers and spires. 

The fairy architecture, the glory of the 
stained glass, the might of the bells, 
the sweet incense, the organ music and the 
splendour of the altars and vestments, all 
contributed to the most marvellous of all 
dramas—medizval worship. 


CHAPTER XIII 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 


EncuisH Gothic is an offshoot from the 
parent stock of France. There were at least 
five moments from 1050 to 1250 when French 
styles of building were imported into England, 
and besides these there was continuous 
influence. From 1050 the Confessor rebuilt the 
abbey church of Westminster on the model 
of the church at Jumiéges, and probably 
brought Norman masons here to execute the 
work. From 1066 a great outburst of Norman 
building followed on the Conquest. In the 
first half of the twelfth century the Cistercians 
brought in their new ideals of architecture. 
In 1174 the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral 
was undertaken by a master from Sens. 
Henry III began in 1245 to rebuild West- 
minster Abbey on the model of the French 
churches of the time, especially the cathedrals 
of Reims and Amiens. As instances of 
general influence we may mention that the 
abbey church of Beaulieu, Hampshire, was, 
so far as can be judged from the foundations, 
practically a copy of that of Clairvaux; at 

211 


212 ARCHITECTURE 


Minster in Kent, and other places on the 
south coast, we find the rows of quatrefoils 
under string mouldings which are so character- 
istic in the architecture of Normandy; and the 
west door of Rochester follows a French type. 

Besides all this there were regular com- 
mercial exchanges of works of art—black 
tomb-slabs and fonts from Tournay : lead fonts 
from Normandy: stained glass from Rouen: 
enamelled effigies from Limoges: plate from 
Paris. The inlaid floor before Becket’s shrine 
at Canterbury is fine French work, c. 1220. 
In turn we exported embroideries, and (after 
1350) carved alabaster works. 

Henry III loved the architecture of France, 
and Robert de Bury, Bishop of Durham in 
the fourteenth century, praises Paris as a 
Paradise. Wren quite rightly says: ‘‘ We 
copied Gothic architecture . . . from France, 
the fashions of which nation we imitated in 
all ages, even when we defied them!” 

A transition leading up to Gothic was very 
widespread by the middle of the twelfth 
century; even before this time the master of 
the church of Ernulph at Canterbury had 
plainly aimed at refinement rather than at 
boldness, a turning-point of style. The first 
Cistercian architecture at Fountains and 
other monastic houses is distinctly of a 
transitional character. And it can hardly 
be doubted that there was a direct develop- 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 213 


ment of Gothic in the Cistercian.abbeys under 
continuous French influence. Recent ex- 
amination of Wells Cathedral, which was 
being built in 1190, has convinced the writer 
that it is built in the Cistercian tradition, 
wholly, or almost, free from the influence 
of Canterbury. Practically all the details (ex- 
cepting the west front) come from Cistercian 
sources. 

The new fashion of cathedral-building in- 
troduced at Canterbury Cathedral as rebuilt 
from 1174 rapidly spread over England. The 
Cathedral of Lincoln, begun about 1190, shows 
close study of Canterbury, and in turn Lincoln 
influenced Holyrood. All these had sexpartite 
vaults; that is, beside the two diagonal ribs in 
each bay there was a central transverse one 
dividing each compartment into six, a favour- 
ite French fashion. York, Beverley, and other 
churches drew inspiration from Lincoln. 

There may have been an _ independent 
Gothic centre in the northern archbishopric. 
Ripon Cathedral is said to have been begun by 
Archbishop Roger, who ruled from 1154 to 
1181. But there is no reason for putting it 
so early as Canterbury. Indeed, if it was 
only begun by Roger, we may assume that 
he did not live to carry it far, and that the 
beginning of the work was about the year 
1180. Roche Abbey is as early as, or earlier 
than, Ripon, and it is probable, on the whole, 


214 ARCHITECTURE 


that this. northern school: of Gothic was 
developed at the Cistercian centres inde- 
pendently of Canterbury, but, of course, as an 
offshoot from the Gothic of France. There 
is some other evidence for direct French action 
on Yorkshire, although it may be that York 
followed the lead of Canterbury in turning to 
France for new inspiration. However, there is 
little that cannot be accounted for by the 
Cistercian tradition. A fine sculptured door- 
way, fragments of which exist at St. Mary’s, 
York, is almost accurately French. A splendid 
fragment of a stained glass Jesse tree which is 
preserved in York Cathedral must have been 
almost a duplicate of windows at Chartres and 
St. Denis. As such a subject, it may be noted 
in passing, belongs to the cycle which would 
have filled the eastern windows above the 
altar, the fragment doubtless belonged to 
one of those which originally lt Roger’s 
presbytery. At Bridlington, among the frag- 
ments, are some remarkable carved capitals 
which are in a foreign manner. There is 
also in this church a fine black grave-slab 
imported from Tournay. 

Westminster Abbey, begun in 1245, opened 
a second chapter in our English Gothic. Its 
windows, which were copied from Reims and 
Amiens Cathedrals, were quickly imitated 
all over the country. Its flying buttresses, 
with their double tiers of arches, were copied 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 215 


at St. Albans, and its sculptured door was 
imitated at Lincoln. The plan was repeated 
at Hailes Abbey, and the chapter house and 
cloister were closely copied at Salisbury. 
The most of our transitional and Karly Gothic 
works may be classed as belonging to (1) the 
Cistercian school; (2) the Canterbury school ; 
(3) the Westminster school. 

We must consider in some detail the 
characteristics of Gothic building through a 
knowledge of which the age of any particular 
work may be told at sight. A _ transition 
leading towards Gothic is visible in works 
built about 1150, and the Gothic manner of 
building lingered on until the middle of the 
sixteenth century. We may thus give to the 
Gothie style a total period of four centuries. 
In 1348-13850 occurred the great plague called 
the Black Death, which cast its shadow over 
all the arts so that they never recovered their 
earlier sweetness and elasticity of style. 
From this time Later Gothic begins, and it is 
well to remember the date, 1350, as the key 
to the chronology of English art. By putting 
two centuries in front of it we get 1150, the 
date of beginning, and adding two centuries 
we obtain 1550 for the death date. 

The various criteria of the progress of the 
changing style were discriminated after a long 
comparison of documents recording works 
of building with the fabrics themselves. It 


216 ARCHITECTURE 


was found that many works recorded as built 
in the twelfth century were massive round- 
arched buildings lighted by simple windows; 
those of the thirteenth century were elegant, 
with sharp pointed arches, and so with the 
distinctive marks of the rest. Then, from 
all these fixed points the general tendency in 
the course of architecture could be inferred. 
The curve, as it were, of architectural develop- 
ment being once laid down, it became easy 
to fit buildings of which no record exists into 
their proper place. After a time certain 
contradictions arose, and some works were 
occasionally found at strife with the seeming 
testimony of the records. In such cases 
either the records may be wrong or misread, 
or the examples in question are misunderstood ; 
they may have been belated, or have belonged 
to an eddy of style. Gradually assurance 
grows until an expert considers himself safe 
in dating a building at sight, in most cases, 
within ten years. 

These styles, then, are but lengths marked 
off on a continuous chain; there is no dis- 
ruption or sudden change anywhere, but a 
constant merging of what was into what was 
to be. We use the word style, also, in a 
larger sense as the Romanesque style, or 
the Gothic. A style-development in this 
sense, from its infancy to maturity, is the 
coming of another summer of art. 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 217 


The terminology relating to the history of 
medizval architecture has fallen into some 
confusion. Although the matter may be 
thought to be only one of words, the present 
lack of agreement must be as puzzling and 
disheartening to the student as irritating 
to the scholar. 

Every one acknowledges that where there 
has been a process of continuous develop- 
ment, as was the case with medieval archi- 
tecture, all delimitation into periods is arbi- 
trary. There may have been quicker and 
slower moments of change, but any attempt 
to deal with these by tracing them to their 
origins results in too great uncertainty and 
confusion to make their periods the basis 
of a scheme of classification. To take an 
illustration: we must cut off the periods of 
manhood from youth, and youth from child- 
hood, arbitrarily or not at all. 

The scheme that has been popular, and 
which, I believe, has shown itself to be so 
practically useful that it must persist, is 
founded upon the necessity of relating some 
striking characteristics in the art to the 
centuries during which the varieties prevailed. 
The terms Early English, Decorated, and 
Perpendicular are by themselves, perhaps, 
not very satisfactory, but as general descrip- 
tions of the most typical forms of archi- 
_ tecture prevailing during the three great 


218 ARCHITECTURE 


centuries of the Medizeval Period they are 
irresistible. We all began to “ discriminate 
the styles”? by making these points firm. 
No learner can grasp exactitudes at once in 
such questions, and all attempts to make 
‘*Karly English” begin, say, in 1174 or 1189, 
are quite vain. The student needs first an 
anchorage in the centuries, for nothing beside 
them is fixed, and unless this is accepted 
every writer is drawn into refinements of his 
own and anarchy. One quite gratuitous source 
of confusion has been found in linking the 
styles to the several kings. The date 1189 
has been suggested for the beginning of 
‘Karly English” because Richard I began 
to reign in that year. 

With the forms of art prevailing in the three 
great centuries have become firmly associated, 
as above said, the names Early English, 
Decorated, and Perpendicular. Now by ex- 
tending the scheme, again by centuries, we 
get from the year 1000 to the year 1600, the 
easily remembered series of six periods 
thus— 


Kleventh century. . SAXON. 

Twelfth century . . NORMAN. 
Thirteenth century . Harty ENGLISH. 
Fourteenth century . DECORATED. 
Fifteenth century . PERPENDICULAR. 


Sixteenth century . . TupDor. 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 219 


There is a slight awkwardness in that three 
of these names are descriptive, while the others 
are historical, but for the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries it would be easy to follow 
the model of “ Early English ” and to inter- 
change (but not substitute) such terms as 
Mature English or Middle Pointed with 
Decorated, and Late English with Perpen- 
dicular. 

It has often been rightly pointed out that 
the process of change was too rapid for 
the characteristics of the architecture of a 
whole century to be fully covered by one 
descriptive name. “ Early English,” being a 
chronological term, would easily serve for the 
thirteenth century, but not so the descriptive 
term “ Lancet,” with which it is frequently 
equated. Nor will “‘ Decorated”? well serve 
for the whole of the fourteenth century, 
although it describes the most striking type 
of architecture in that century. Taking these 
terms, however, as they stand, it appears that, 
having fixed the broader terminology for the 
centuries, we may go on to say that the more 
characteristic forms of the styles so named 
are found in every case during the first half 
of each century, the latter half being a 
transitional era. Thus, Norman to 1150, 
Transition to 1200, Early English to 1250, 
Transition to 1800, Decorated to 1350, Transi- 
tion to 1400, Perpendicular to 1450, Transition 


220 ARCHITECTURE 


to 1500, Tudor to 1550. It happens that 
several secondary terms in current use would 
serve to define most of these transitional 
half-century periods picturesquely, and with 
substantial accuracy. Combining all into an 
extended list of twelve periods, we get the 
following, which forms a sort of Zodiac of 
English architecture. Beginning with the 
year 1000, the period 1000-1050 is Saxon; 
1050 to 1100 is Early Norman; 1100-1150 is 
Mature Norman; the period 1150-1200 is 
known as The Transition (for works like 
Canterbury we might say First Gothic); 1200— 
1250 is Lancet; 1250-1300 is Geometrical; 
and 1300-1350 is Curvilinear. For the period 
1350-1400 we have-no convenient name 
other than Late Decorated, unless for the 
sake of symmetry we could tolerate some 
new term like fretted, or tabernacled, or. 
Chaucerian Gothic. 


“Many subtill compassyngs, 
As barbicans and pinnacles; 
Imageries and tabernacles 
I sawe, and full eke of windowis, 
As flakis falling in grete snowis.” 


The period 1400-1450 is represented by 
the Mature Perpendicular, but if this term has 
too wide a meaning to be limited to so short 
a period, we might use Lancastrian (Henry 1V 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 221 


succeeded in 1400). An old term, Rectilinear, 
might well serve for the time from 1450-1500, 
or we might also use Yorkist. 1500-1550 
was Tudor. Beyond these twelve phases of 
medizval art in England 1550-1600 was 
Elizabethan, 1600-1650 was Renaissance. 
The terms Norman, Early English, and the 
Transition coming between the two, are 
historical and self-explanatory; the others are 
descriptive and need some further elucidation. 
Lancet describes the simple pointed windows 
in use before compound windows of tracery 
were invented. Geometric, which followed, 
describes the earliest form of traceried win- 
dows, which were designed in simple com- 
positions of foiled circles above lancet lights. 
The next phase, Curvilinear, or Early Deco- 
rated, marks a modification; the forms flowing 
into one another in more complex shapes. 
In Late Decorated, a highly ornate style, the 
tracery tends to stiffen once more, a number 
of vertical lines being introduced. This Late 
Decorated, in a word, forms a transition to 
the next phase, described from this charac- 
teristic as the Perpendicular style. In Late 
Perpendicular, or Rectilinear, vertical and 
horizontal lines are still more strongly marked, 
arches are flattened and enclosed in straight- 
sided forms, and the whole surface is often 
covered with panelled tracery. The Tudor 
style carried on this manner with the growing 


222 ARCHITECTURE 


intrusion of forms derived from the Renais- 
sance architecture of the Continent. 

The acceptance of such definitions of terms 
will not at all tie the investigator who is 
working at the origins of any particular phase 
of style. The origin of Perpendicular, for 
instance, may be pushed back to 1380, 1860 
or 1840; the Decorated can be carried back 
into Early English, and Early English into 
Norman. When we consider any of these 
separately we can enlarge their periods as 
much as we like. But in a schedule of the 
sequences of styles, Perpendicular, if it is to 
mean anything fixed, must be held to begin 
at midnight, December 31, 1399. We must 
hold that up to that moment enough of the 
earlier tradition survived to make Perpen- 
dicular-like compositions really only Late 
Decorated. In a similar way, summer has 
to be violently divided from spring, and spring 
from winter, whatever the weather may be 
like. When we come to apply any system to 
some given example there may sometimes 
seem to be a difficulty. Thus, Canterbury 
Cathedral, begun in 1174, is certainly Gothic. 
However, there is no contradiction in allowing 
that sporadic cases of First Gothic fell in 
the Transitional Period. If our terms mean 
anything fixed, we can somehow contrive to 
be precise. The point to get clear is, that a 
connection has been established by popular 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 223 


usage between the three best-known style 
names and the thirteenth, fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. 

Parker, in the Concise Glossary (1869), 
divides the periods thus: Norman, 1066- 
1189; Early English, 1189-1272; Decorated, 
1272-1377; Perpendicular, c. 13850-c. 1500. 
Sharpe, in his excellent essay, The Seven 
Periods of English Architecture (1871), gives 
the several styles periods which vary in 
length from forty-five to one hundred and 
ninety years, and begin and end at dates 
which also are quite impossible to remember. 
Thus: Saxon, up to 1066; Norman, 1066- 
1145; Transitional, 1145-1190; Lancet, 1190— 
1245; Geometrical, 1245-1315; Curvilinear, 
13815-1360; Rectilinear, 1860-1550. To re- 
capitulate the results which we may hope to 
retain in our memory :— 

The mid-point of Gothic architecture was 
in 1350. In 1150 it began, in 1550 it ended. 
The first two centuries were the period of 
Early Gothic, the last two the period of Late 
Gothic. The most characteristic phases of 
the Norman, Early English, Decorated, Per- 
pendicular, and Tudor styles fell in the 
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries, and these names may — 
stand more exactly for the styles as they were 
in the first halves of those several centuries. 
That this should be so agrees conveniently 


224 ARCHITECTURE 


with the fact that the main points of beginning, 
middle and end of the whole span of Gothic 
fall in the middle of the twelfth, fourteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. 

The word Gothic was applied at the Renais- 
sance to art which was not classical, but it 
has come to mean the most characteristic 
medizval art in western Kurope. An attempt, 
however, has been made by a distinguished 
writer, in an able study of the style, to 
show that English work is not “ true Gothic,” 
and that it has no claim to bear the same name 
as the great French medieval art. And 
he suggests that it might more properly be 
called the Pointed style. It should be ad- 
mitted that English work is inferior to the 
most perfect ogival architecture of France, 
but it is a mistake to define any class by the 
qualities of its highest members. There is 
room in the class for better and worse, even 
for good and bad. It is a mistake, also, to 
attempt to define Gothic art by a mere archi- 
tectural formula. The word Gothic applies 
to much more than architecture, and Gothic 
architecture answered to a spirit, an atmo- 
sphere, a moment and an environment. It 
is the building style which responded to the 
medizeval civilization in western Europe, the 
centre of which was the Ile de France. But 
this, of course, was not a centre without a 
circumference. 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 225 


The general perception of likeness has led 
to giving the name of Gothic to a type of 
building the traditions of which spread from. 
the He de France, Picardy, and Champagne; 
and the word has been in use in England for 
three hundred years. If only the culminating 
works of the thirteenth century in France 
are to be called Gothic, what is the rest to be 
named ? May we say Gothic of Burgundy 
and of Normandy ? If so, why may we not 
say Anglo-Norman, or English Gothic ? That 
England was saturated with Frenchness in 
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries need 
not be said. According to a recent French 
writer on Chaucer, his inspiration, his outlook 
on life, the atmosphere, the framework of 
his powers, are French—French of France, 
Champagne, or Burgundy, not Norman or 
Breton. ‘“ His spirit is French, like his name. 
He descends in a straight line from our 
trouvéres, and he has everything except their 
tongue.” 

We have no more claim to call our archi- 
tecture Pointed than Gothic, for the logic 
of pointed construction was best understood 
at the Gothic centre. In England the round 
arch lasted long, and as the style grew old 
the arches tended to lose their points. As 
everything was done better somewhere else, 
should English work have any name at all ? 
By the use of special definitions, contriving a 

P 


226 ARCHITECTURE 


‘* fundamental difference,’”? anything may be 
proved. i 

On the other hand, some English writers 
make over-patriotic demands for the inde- 
pendence of English Gothic, and we are prone 
to date our works too early where it is 
not altogether impossible. Thus in Oxford 
Cathedral, of which at least a part was dedi- 
cated in 1180, most of the carved foliage 
distinctly appears to be affected by the style 
of the work begun in Canterbury in 1174; yet 
in recent books we find its beginning put 
somewhere near the middle of the century. 
Examination of the fabric itself shows that 
the small presbytery was first completed as 
a separate work, and this is probably all. that 
was dedicated in 1180. It might have been 
begun as late as 1175. Part of the carving 
in this presbytery is of an earlier type than 
that at Canterbury, but much of it appears 
to be later. 

The nave of Rochester Cathedral, with its 
sculptured west door, is assigned, in the most 
recent and thorough study of the subject, 
to about 1130, although to the present writer 
it appears that it must be thirty or forty years 
later. The search for variety of form, which 
is obvious in the plans of the nave columns; 
the carving of the fronts of the triforium 
arches, which include small foiled panels; 
the pointed arch of the passage at trifortum 


ENGLISH GOTHIC 207 


level; the type of bay design, in which the 
triforium story is included in the interior 
height of the aisle; the west front, with its 
sculptures, dog-tooth ornament, incipient tre- 
foil arches, and other points, all show it to 
be a transitional work. Whitby Abbey is 
said to have been built early in the thirteenth 
century, but the wall arcade of the transept 
has tracery that cannot be earlier than 1250, 
and it may be doubted whether the church 
was begun much before the middle of the 
century. Important parts of both Fountains 
Abbey and Wells Cathedral have also been 
pushed too far back. Merton College Chapel 
has been dated c. 1270, but it has recently 
been shown that it was built from 1294 to 
1297. 

French authors also make extravagantly 
exorbitant demands on their side. Thus, 
M. Emile Male has lately annexed all English 
stained glass up to the fourteenth century. 
Now, the Guthlac roll in the British Museum 
is guaranteed by all experts to be an English 
work of the latter end of the twelfth century, 
and to be a set of designs for stained glass 
windows. If technical designs for stained 
glass of a high quality like these were made in 
England, there must at the same time have 
been a school of glass-workers here; and much 
of our thirteenth and fourteenth century glass 
is obviously not French. 


228 ARCHITECTURE 


Dr. M. R. James has given reasons for 
thinking that the superb glass of Canterbury 
choir was at least designed on a scheme drawn 
up in England, and we know that stained glass 
was made use of at Durham as early as the 
time of Bishop Pudsey, who glazed the choir 
of the cathedral. 

The special contributions which were made 
by the English school to the traditions of 
Medieval Gothic art were: the octagonal 
chapter house, of which that at Westminster 
is the most perfect type; the working out of 
several fine varieties of open timber roofs, 
and the early elaboration of curvilinear 
tracery, which possibly, to some degree, 
reacted in forming the flamboyant stonework 
of France. The ruling temper of English 
Gothic at its high time is a spirit of sweetness 
which contrasts with the soaring grandeur 
of the French cathedrals. 

The theory of stonework construction at 
maximum stress was never perfectly grasped, 
but still English work is truly Gothic. To 
attempt to prove that it is not, is like 
proving that a rustic isnoman. It can be 
easily done by manipulating definitions, but 
he remains a man after all. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF RHE- 
TORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF _ FIRST 
PRINCIPLES 


AFTER the Lombard invasion, and especially 
after the establishment of the Empire of 
Charlemagne, in the early Middle Ages, 
northern Italy was split up into many city- 
states which owed allegiance to the German 
emperors; the only central power in Italy 
was that of the Pope. When the medieval 
culture, of which Dante was the perfect flower, 
matured, Italy was already the most learned 
country in Europe. Its artists and scholars 
were in daily contact with the monuments of 
the past, and they could do no other than look 
back to the splendour that was Rome. As 
the study of antiquity progressed, it was 
perceived that the buildings of the “ Dark 
Ages’? were of an entirely different spirit 
from those of Rome. Raphael, an eager 
antiquary, called them Gothic, by which he 
meant that they had followed on the Gothic 
invasions, including in this term alike the 
architecture of seen the Goth in the 


230 ARCHITECTURE 


sixth century and that of Countess Matilda 
in the twelfth. These things were alien, 
barbarous. They were builded evidence of 
the conquest of the true Italians by the 
** Tedeschi.” 

A revival of paren feeling, and of ancient 
letters, necessarily carried along with it 
an endeavour to resume the ancient and 
glorious art of Rome. Thus the Renaissance 
in Italy was a “ nationalist ’? movement and 
a ““modernist ”’ one as well. According to the 
new programme of learning every phenomenon 
was to be studied and seen as it was. History, 
science, antiquities, were all alike branches 
of human knowledge. Withal Rome had 
never passed out of sight. Theodoric had 
issued orders for the protection of the city. 
Here and there people still dwelt and wor- 
shipped in Roman buildings; the writings 
of Vitruvius had continued to be copied 
as a mysterious guide in architecture ; and 
such a medieval work as the Baptistery at 
Florence was almost classical in largeness of 
style and in the antique form of its details. 

The Renaissance in Roman Italy was thus 
a perfectly natural impulse, and was, indeed, 
inevitable. Perhaps if it had taken some 
different turning it might have been more 
obviously beneficial; as it was, there was not 
only eagerness to learn and to bring back 
forgotten powers to architecture, but there 


THE RENAISSANCE 231 


Was eagerness, as well, to forget what the 
intervening time had gained. In _ looking 
back, art loses its life. 

Outside Italy, in Germany, France, and 
England, the movement is less easily under- 
stood. The court of the popes was the centre 
of European culture, and the fashion to follow 
the lead of the most advanced country sprang 
up in all the other courts of Europe, so that 
a great break with the near past was made. 
This revolution was something like that which 
has happened in modern Japan. One great 
social consequence which such a change must 
have, in Europe, or in Japan, is that art 
becomes divorced from the people. Art had 
been a common aptitude by which customary 
needs were satisfied, but after such a disrup- 
tion it was understood only by experts and 
connoisseurs who themselves only thought 
they understood. It is very confusing to 
speculate why that which happened, and 
** was to be,” should be at war with life. The 
Renaissance has led to noble expression in 
individual arts where there was a second 
inspiration as well as that of antiquity—the 
sculptures of Michael Angelo, the portraiture 
of Velasquez, the landscapes of Claude and 
Turner—but in all these direct reference 
to Nature comes in at the source. Such 
refreshment was excluded from the purview 
of the sanctioned architecture in the grand 


239 ARCHITECTURE 


style. In early times, especially, very beauti- 
ful mixed works were wrought, but the Roman 
revival as a whole has proved arid and sterile, 
nothing grows from it. It may be, but this 
is the vaguest theory, that in this second- 
hand dealing with Rome the influence of the 
East has been too entirely strained out, and 
that there must always be a circuit established 
between East and West by which art may be 
vitalized, as first at the beginning we found 
Egypt, Europe, and Mesopotamia reacting 
upon one another. 

As another consequence of its remoteness 
from the people Renaissance art came to be 
thought of as a matter of pride and pretty 
shapes, of taste and appearance. It was not 
generally seen that great art like great science 
is the discovery of necessity; although 
Leonardo da Vinci—and in a less degree 
Wren—did reach this concept of the meaning 
of art. To discover this is to reach to the 
universal in architecture and to a point of 
view which looks on all styles as accidents of 
an environment and a moment. All vital 
schools, however, knew this instinctively, as 
knowing no other. They did not theorize, 
but built. 

It must, I think, be admitted by those who 
have in part understood the great primary 
styles, Greek or Gothic, that the Renaissance 
is a style of boredom. However beautiful 


THE RENAISSANCE 233 


single works may be, it tends to be blind, 
puffy, and big-wiggy; Louis Quatorze might 
have said of the art of his court as he did of the. 
state, “‘ It is myself.’’ Its highest inspiration 
was good taste, it was architect’s architecture. 
Splendid works were wrought even in the age of 
its gloomy maturity by Peruzzi, Michael Angelo, 
and Wren, but as a whole it seems to be the art 
of an age of Indigestion. There are things in 
Nature—a dewy morning, a snowy peak, a 
clear stream—which are ever and again more 
wonderful than we had remembered. A true 
work of art always has something of this 
surprising freshness; but the Renaissance as 
a whole lacked the spirit of life. Gothic art 
witnesses to a nation in training, hunters, 
craftsmen, athletes; the Renaissance is the 
art of scholars, courtiers, and the connoisseur- 
ship of middlemen. 

The Renaissance made itself felt in different 
centres during the fifteenth century. At 
Florence a beautiful mixed style which fol- 
lowed traditional spacing and changed only 
the forms of cornices and other details, pre- 
vailed for a time. In Venice veneering 
with marble, inlaying with porphyry and 
the use of coloured materials in construction 
was long continued from the earlier Byzantine 
tradition. Only gradually, and by later 
masters like Palladio, was the “ true antique ”’ 
imposed as a dogma; it even seems to have 


7 


234 ARCHITECTURE 


been held in some half-realized way, that the 
‘‘ orders ’’ had been specially revealed as the 
only absolute architecture; nothing else can 
explain the awed devotion of the expounders 
and commentators of the text of Vitruvius. 
*It fell out, however, that the chief works 
which had to be built were not columnar 
temples, but palaces with enclosing walls. 
The chief features of these had necessarily to 
be windows, floors, staircases, just the things 
for which there was least authority. In 
adopting the precedents to these new condi- 


' tions there was at first considerable ingenuity 


which gives an interest to the “style ’’; but 
other factors, like roofs and chimneys, were 
suppressed as much as possible as not being 
quite respectable; although, to a northern 
mind, the roof is.the most essential part of 
a building—” roof”? and “chimney,” indeed, 
are almost synonymous with home. As a 
whole the building interest, the essential 
centre of architecture, gave way to scholar- 
ship and taste; knowledge of precedents took 
the place of adventure. 

On the other hand it seems as if the men of 
the Renaissance first awoke to full conscious- 
ness of their environment. The ruins of 
Rome existed, but they had hardly been seen 
for a thousand years. The wonderful Greek 
temples of Pestum appear to have been 
unnoticed even until about 1750. Travellers 


THE RENAISSANCE | 235 


passed them by, and shepherds rested in 
their shadow, but they seem to have been 
taken for granted and observed only as the 
goats observed them. The first enthusiasm 
of the Renaissance must have been a won- 
derful experience, when men like Donatello, 
awakening to the idea “We are Romans,” 
explored the Forum, and broke into the 
chambers of the Great Baths, where they 
studied the paintings and found noble marble 
statues buried in the débris. 

The great gift of the Renaissance would 
seem to be the scientific spirit, and we prob- 
ably owe to it larger ideas of civic order and 
hygiene. The architects brought back many 
of the lost powers of their art, and developed 
certain factors like the staircase and the 
balustrade. The art of engineering advanced 
so swiftly that it has since broken away from 
the general art of building to the detriment 
of both. 

On the one hand the Renaissance was a 
rhetorical art, but on the other its artists 
to some degree reconsidered first principles. 
To go back to first principles in architecture 
is, we are often told, impossible. Doubtless 
it is to do so absolutely, but all schools of archi- 
tecture have done it in some degree, and the 
Renaissance, in the thought of the greatest 
mind of its age, was to include an exhaustive 
exploration of the first principles of all arts. 


~ 


236 ARCHITECTURE 


The history of art is full of instances of return 
to underlying principles. 

Roman architecture, on its structural side, 
was largely an art of first principles: the 
early Christian and Byzantine schools of build- 
ing divested themselves of nearly all that 
was formula; and Gothic architecture sprang 
up after the Cistercians had brought about 
a large return to the structural elements of 
building. Modern engineering, the noblest 
architectural result of the Renaissance, is 
almost entirely an art of first principles. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE MODERN POSITION 


Axout the middle of the eighteenth century 
the first ideal of the Renaissance, the desire 
to be Roman, passed away. It had been a 
fashion at courts and they tired of it. About 
this time the monuments of Greek art were 
discovered and described, and at home our 
national architecture was rediscovered. Then 
soon along the same line of Renaissance—the 
essential idea of which is the attempt to pro- 
duce an architecture by copying old external 
forms—some English architects set about 
being Greek, and later others became “ Gothic 
men.’ After more than a century of these 
mixed efforts to be Roman, Greek and Gothic, 
efforts which necessarily fell short of the 
earlier Renaissance because they lacked its 
conviction and solidity, a still greater anarchy 
of style arose. Some clever men varied Greek 
by a slight tinge of Egyptian, others attempted 
the Dutch house style, and others the Byzan- 
tine church style. Some, again, attempted a 
Renaissance of Wren’s Renaissance, and to- 


day others—and this seems to be the last 
237 


238 ARCHITECTURE 


word—endeavour to bring about a Renais- 
sance of Professor Cockerell’s Greek. 

It was very natural for the enthusiastic 
medizvalists who first studied our national 
monuments to suppose that this architecture 
was a matter of forms, proportions and details, 
and that if these were observed and absorbed, 
similar works might be produced out of due 
time. When disappointment was felt with 
the result of these attempts it was always 
proposed to rectify any failing by still closer 
study. Not the actual forms, but clever 
adaptations of them, “in the spirit of the 
original,’’ was to form the basis of the new 
departure. Then it was seen that old work 
was full of variations which seemed to be 
accidents, and our contract workmen were 
carefully instructed in jointing, tooling and 
texture, so that their work might appear to 
have the same old eager mastery; for still it 
was thought that if the appearance were 
reached ‘the essence itself of Gothicness must 
be present. 

About 1860 many gifted men seem really 
to have thought that they were Gothic archi- 
tects, and that they could supply thirteenth, 
fourteenth and fifteenth century buildings at 
demand. Thus they had little hesitation in 
applying the process called “ Restoration ” 
to our ancient buildings, for, if any part were 
imperfect, they could make it good and as it 


THE MODERN POSITION 239 


ought to be. They always, indeed, saw that 
the restorations of other men, and even their 
own, were failures as soon as they were 
irrevocable, but they always hoped to be 
truly Gothic next time. It was not seen that 
as no man, by taking observation, may be 
a Chinese or an Egyptian artist, so no man 
might be Plantagenet or Edwardian at will. 
Men of high genius like Victor Hugo, Ruskin 
and Morris, early perceived the facts, but the 
men who called themselves practical had to 
shut their eyes to such disquieting literature. 
Ruskin, for instance, in his chapter on “ The 
Nature of Gothic ” wrote: “ Its elements are 
certain mental tendencies of the builders 
legibly expressed in it; it is not enough that 
it has the form if it has not also the power 
and the life. . . . Various mental characters 
make up the soul of Gothic.” 

Before passing to consider what might be 
done—if anything can be done before the 
hour strikes—it is desirable to examine 
shortly two esthetic superstitions about 
beauty in architecture which stand in the way 
of our attaining it. One is the vague idea 
of an abstract and absolute proportion, 
whereas true proportion is always changing in 
answer to changing conditions. Proportion, 
properly, is the resultant of fitness. The 
Greeks, as their temple architecture slowly 
developed, came to think that a special 


240 ARCHITECTURE 


virtue attached itself to dimensional simplicity, 
that, if every part were related to every other 
part by a simple scheme of fractions, a unity 
would result, and that the temple in reaching 
this unity would become a perfect thing. But 
all such ideas necessarily break down where 
building becomes more complex and is con- 
ditioned by other needs than that of attaining 
a sort of sacred perfection. Proportion of 
this sort was in truth rather a satisfaction to 
the mind than to the eye. Dante found 
pleasure in building his poem according to 
similar rules. Even to-day something of 
the same feeling persists. We know that if 
a room is a foot or two out of square, the 
irregularity can hardly be seen, and if it is 
a few inches only no one will ever notice it, 
but, still, we do not like it so. We feel a satis- 
faction in saying that a room is a double 
square, or 80 x 20, yet it would be just as 
good a room if it were 31 x 19. However, 
these ideas are definite and clear, and they 
can be applied to any simple structure like a 
Greek temple. A modern architect might 
design a tombstone with certain ratios, if he 
cared, but he could hardly try to apply a 
preconceived and arbitrary system to larger 
problems. 

Proportion, then, means either the result 
of building according to dimensions having 
definite relations one to another, or it means 


THE MODERN POSITION 241 


functional fitness. It might be said, “ But 
are not some relations more agreeable than 
others, even if no exact explanation of them 
can be given?”? The answer is twofold—if no 
explanation can be given the hoped-for result 
might be obtained by an instinct, but it 
certainly will not by reasoning about it. And 
secondly, what is to be done when such ideas 
of proportions and other considerations con- 
flict—as they always will do until the eye is 
schooled to take its delight in fitness? For 
instance, we may think we like the relation 
of window to wall usual in Italian palaces, 
but it is unsuitable for darker latitudes. The 
right proportion of window to wall is that 
which shall give the most suitable light. There 
will always be room enough for individual 
opinion and for instinctive adjustments, but 
to talk of proportion without attempting to 
realize what is meant is mere confusion. 
The other superstition is that an external 
form of beauty may be reached and demon- 
strated other than as the sum of many 
obviously desirable qualities, such as dur- 
ability, spaciousness, order, masterly con- 
struction, and a score of other factors needful 
to a fine school of building. There is no 
beauty beyond these except in the expression 
of mind and of the temperament of the soul. 
Probably the less that is satd about these the 
better. The temper of the national soul is 
Q 


242 ARCHITECTURE 


likely to operate best in silence. Little could 
be gained by disquisitions on purpose, fitness, 
unity, vigour, simplicity, dignity, generosity 
and intelligibility. Qualities like these rising 
to joy and fervour, or sweetness and gaiety, 
all tell in the result for beauty—they are all 
the stuff from which beauty is made—but 
the mere semblance of rapture and intensity 
are abhorrent. Experience seems to show 
that much esthetic intention is destructive. 
No art can long outlast it, for art should 
deal with higher and deeper things, realities 
which will force their own expression. 

We know those too capricious monuments 
which popular insight has well named 
*“* Follies.” All modern buildings have too 
much that is merely capricious. Little in 
ancient architecture was “‘ designed.” Things 
designed by a single mind are mostly “ sports,” 
which must quickly perish. Only that which 
is in the line of development can persist. 
Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals were 
built traditionally according to custom. Even 
the sites—those wonderful sites of temples 
and cathedrals—were not selected because 
the building would “ look well’ there. The 
sites were sacred from remote time or they 
were pointed out by some oracular dictum. 
Alike on the Cape of Sunium, the cliffs of 
Selinus, and the Acropolis rock of Athens, or 
on the plain of Pestum and the muddy flat 


THE MODERN POSITION 243 


of Ephesus, the Greeks indifferently founded 
their great temples. Nothing looks well that 
has been done for “ look.”? It seems right at 
first, but quickly the doing becomes diseased. 
Only by being intensely real can we get back 
wonder into building once more. We have 
this awe of a ship, a bridge, a machine. Why 
should that ancient thing, a house, have be- 
come so vulgar and pretentious ? It seems to 
be the result of “ good taste.” 

One rather confusing element is the question 
of decoration. Here, again, much may be 
accepted as obvious; casings and inlays of 
finer material, the glitter of gold, harmonious 
change of colour, some little intricacy of work- 
manship, and, above all, stories in painting 
and sculpture. The commonplaces of ordin- 
ary architectural “‘ ornamentation ”’ cannot be 
justified; at their origin these things had a 
meaning, and most generally patterns were 
simplified pictures. ‘“ Plastic art has gone 
through a process of mental evolution far 
higher than the futile pleasure of decoration.” 
Ample materials for ornamentation exist 
. which are universal and modern without our 
calling for more hundreds of miles of “‘ egg 
and tongue” or more acres of “‘ vermicula- 
tion.”” These are such methods as_ the 
introduction of precious material, and changes 
of colour, plaitings and frets of lines, forms 
simplified from Nature, sculptured stories, 


244 ARCHITECTURE 


inscriptions; we don’t make enough use of 
inscriptions. After all, we must remember 
that beauty may be unadorned, and it is 
possible that ornamentation, which arises in 
such arts as tattooing, belongs to the infancy 
of the world, and it may be that it will 
disappear from our architecture as it has 
from our machinery. Why should we wish 
for a sham Jacobean house more than for a 
motor-car in the style of a sedan chair ? 

When a better modern architecture is to 
emerge, we shall necessarily find a greater 
interest in it and a sounder basis of criticism. 
In the days when the cathedrals were built, 
people were as concerned about them as we 
are about cricket. The arts can only flourish 
when there is a common interest in them, and 
constant criticism by all—that is, by all people 
except critics. 

When the series of Renaissance styles reach 
their end, we may expect that on the then 
existing basis, whether it may be sham Greek 
or sham Gothic, a movement will be imper- 
ceptibly entered on which will transform the 
chaos into another order. 

The Renaissance was self-conscious, but 
moderns are conscious that they are self- 
conscious. In the arts there seem to be only 
three possible courses open to us: (1) that 
we may be able to determine our way and 
come to some agreement, and thus build up 


THE MODERN POSITION 245 


a fully conscious architecture, free and fine; 
(2) or there may be some turn in civilization, | 
quick or slow, which by a change of conditions 
will compel a change in the arts; (8) or 
there remains the treadmill of stylemongering 
—successive fashions of little party cries and 
their enthusiasms, now for imitation Gothie, 
then for the national Renaissance, and a 
return to Roman and Greek once more. 

Supposing that we could as reasonable men 
make a stand, and guide development, there 
is much which obviously requires to be done. 
One of the first things—there are so many— 
should be a greater public demand for sub- 
stantial and convenient buildings. In this 
respect our big cities fall far short of many 
second-rate towns on the Continent. Except 
for a hundred or two of buildings, London 
needs to be rebuilt from end to end. No 
writer on economics has yet told us what are 
the limits to expenditure in public arts, 
whether a beautiful city is an investment, 
or an extravagance. The modern political 
economy of quantity should be corrected by 
a political economy of quality. 

Writers who have set out theories of cor- 
porate life talk much of utilities, but they often 
have a very narrow view of what makes a 
utility; and the blind may lead the blind 
down so steep a place that they drive those 
who have eyes along with them. According 


246 ARCHITECTURE 


to Plutarch, Pericles entered on the rebuilding 
of Athens as the best means of wisely dis- 
tributing wealth among the people, and it is 
somewhat curious that the first systematic 
writer on political economy was the Greek 
architect, Hippodamus of Miletus, in the fifth 
century B.C. 

Sir Christopher Wren asserts: “ Archi- 
tecture has its political use; public buildings 
being the ornament of a country, it establishes 
a nation; draws people and commerce; makes 
the people love their native country, which 
‘passion is the great original of all great actions 
in the commonwealth. The emulation of 
the Greek cities was the true cause of their 
greatness. The obstinate valour of the Jews, 
occasioned by the love of their temple, was 
a cement that held that people together for 
many ages through infinite changes.” 

If ever we are to have a time of architecture 
again, it must be founded on a love for the 
city, a worship of home and nation. No plant- 
ing down of a few costly buildings, ruling some 
straight streets, provision of fountains, or 
setting up of a number of stone and bronze 
dolls, is enough without the enthusiasm for 
corporate life and common ceremonial. Every 
noble city has been a crystallization of the 
contentment, pride and order of the com- 
munity. <A period of architecture is the time 
of a flowing tide. 


THE MODERN POSITION 247 


If the municipalities would spend less on 
“art,” and more on requiring fine quality 
in all ordinary forms of workmanship the 
situation would soon be improved. Cleaner 
streets and tidier railway stations would be 
better than all the knowledge of all the styles. 
An endeavour to better the city in inducing 
civic patriotism would be sure in due time to 
bring a fit method of expression. When we 
see how powerful is an idea—the cause, order, 
form—to boys, it does seem possible that men 
too may organize themselves into lovers of 
the city, seekers after discipline. 

With increased demand for buildings fit 
for modern cities must be undertaken the 
more systematic education of architects. Our 
education for the most part has been archzo- 
logical, with the result that we now stand 
timidly at the centre of a score of roads, and 
we seem to know all about all of them, but we 
do not know which to take, although the 
fairest horizon might be reached if we could 
go in one direction long enough. 

It has been a wasteful system, too regard- 
less of results, or too regardful of wrong 
results. It is absurd, for instance, that the 
writer should have been allowed to study 
cathedrals from Kirkwall to Rome and from 
Quimper to Constantinople; it would be far, 
better to have an equivalent knowledge of 
steel and concrete construction. 


248 ARCHITECTURE 


Now that all the styles on earth have been 
surveyed and accounted for historically, what 
is wanted is a new type of classification by 
essential differences of structure, an account 
of the powers of architecture, a new science of 
building morphology. To forget the past 
would be as foolish as to ignore the future. 
Behind is custom, as in front is adventure. 
Great building types should be investigated 
as structural problems, the temple, basilica, 
theatre, baths, church, town hall, hospital, 
bridge, and the city as a whole. 

Further, the several factors of building, 
the powers of architecture, require to be 
investigated one by one—the wall, the column, 
the floor, the roof, the buttress, the arch, 
vault and dome. We want especially for our 
own country a record of existing building 
methods and traditions of workmanship, as 
they are still carried on in their several 
localities in relation to the materials at hand; 
as Yorkshire walling and stone dressing— 
which is still quite beautiful in out-of-the-way 
parts; Norfolk thatching, Essex plastering, 
Kentish tiling. Finally, we need a true science 
of architecture, a sort of architectural biology 
which shall investigate the unit cell and all 
the possibilities of combination. 

_ Modern armoured concrete is only a higher 
power of the Roman system of construction. 
If we could sweep away our fear that it is 


THE MODERN POSITION 249 


an inartistic material, and boldly build a 
railway station, a museum, or a cathedral, 
wide and simple, amply lighted, and call in our 
painters to finish the walls, we might be inter- 
ested in building again almost at once. This 
building interest must be aroused. We have 
to aim at a standard of ordinary good quality ; 
damp, cracked and leaky “ architecture”’ 
must give way to houses as efficient as a 
bicycle. 

Our great difficulty is lack of spontaneous 
agreement; an expressive form of art is only 
reached by building out in one direction 
during a long time. No art that is only one 
man deep is worth much; it should be a 
thousand men deep. We cannot forget our 
historical knowledge, nor would we if we 
might. The important question is, Can it be 
organized and directed, or must we continue 
to be betrayed by it? The only agreement 
that seems possible is agreement on a scientific 
basis, on an endeavour after perfect structural 
efficiency. If we could agree on this we 
need not trouble about beauty, for that 
would take care of itself. Our survey should 
have shown us that there is not one absolute 
external form of beauty, but rather an endless 
series of changing modes in which the uni- 
versal spirit of beauty may manifest itself ; 
that, indeed, change of the form is one of the 
conditions of its continuance. In Egyptian 


250 ~ ARCHITECTURE 


architecture power, wonder, terror, are ex- 
pressed; in the Greek, serenity, measure and 
balance, fairness; in the Roman, force and 
splendour; in the Byzantine, solemnity, 
mystery, adoration; in the Romanesque, 
strife and life; in the Arab, elasticity, intricacy 
and glitter, a suggestion of fountain spray 
and singing birds; in the Gothic, intensity, 
swiftness, a piercing quality, an architecture 
not only of stone, but of stained glass, bells 
and organ music. Beauty is the complexion 
of health, to reach it we must put aside our 
preoccupation about different sorts of rouge. 
We are always agonizing about design, but 
design, as Rodin has said, is as nothing com- 
pared to workmanship. Any one may see 
a beautiful landscape composition, but it 
needs a Turner to paint it. A rearing horse 
is a living statue, but the difficulty is to carve 
like Phidias. A skilful architect may design 
the lines of a cathedral bigger than Bourges, 
and embodying several excellent new ideas, 
before his breakfast, but there is little virtue 
in writing “‘'700 feet long,” or in planning 
three transepts instead of one, or in making 
the chapels quatrefoils instead of octagonal ; 
these are nothing compared to great building 
skill. 

Through the ages when architecture was 
a direct and developing art, architects were 
masters of building, engineers, masons and 


THE MODERN POSITION 251 


carpenters, in immediate contact with 
materials. Experiment must be brought back 
once more as the centre of architecture, and 
architects must be trained as engineers are 
trained. It cannot be genius that is lacking to 
us. An age that can produce Watts’ Physical 
Energy, Madox Brown’s Manchester paintings, 
and the Forth Bridge, should be able to pro- 
duce anything—anything that is, except the 
Tower Bridge as well. 

Modern works like the Nile dam, the magni- 
ficent railway viaduct at Morlaix, and the 
Rhine bridge at Cologne, need no apology. 
We must learn from France, Germany and 
Switzerland how worthily to finish engineering 
structures ; most of our English works are too 
crude and raw. 

The modern way of building must be flexible 
and vigorous, even smart and hard. We must 
give up designing the broken-down picturesque 
which is part of the ideal of make-believe. 
The enemy is not science, but vulgarity, a 
pretence to beauty at second hand. We have 
to awaken the civic ideal and to aim first at 
the obvious commonplaces of cleanliness, 
order and neatness. Much has to be done, 
it is a time of beginning as well as of making 
an end. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


GENERAL.—J. Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones 
of Venice, etc. The best general histories are by A. Choisy 
in French, Diirm in German, and Russell Sturgis in 
English. See also works by J. Fergusson, F. M. Simpson, 
and Banister Fletcher. 


Ecypr.—J. Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt; G. Foucart, 
Histoire del ordre Lotiforme ; Perrot and Chipiez, History 
of Art, etc.; W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of 
Civilization, Egyptian Aris and Crafis, Meydum, etc. ; 
J. E. Perring, The Pyramids of Gizeh; A. Choisy, L’ Art 
de Batir chez les Hgyptiens. 


BABYLON AND AssyRIA.—Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, 
etc. ; G. C. C. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization ; W. 
Andrae, Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur. 


CRETE AND Mycenm.—Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, 
etc. ; R. M. Burrows, Discoveries in Crete ; Sir A. Evans, 
articles in the Annual of the British School at Athens, 
1900, etc. 


GreEEcE.—Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and 
Rome, with a full bibliography; A. Marquand, Greek 
Architecture; W. BR. Lethaby, Greek Buildings in the 
British Museum. 


Romr.—J. H. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome ; A. Choisy, 
LT Art de Bétir chez les Romains (and see Greece). 


EARLy OCuristTIAN.—H. M. Leclercq, Manuel d Archéologie 
Chretienne, with a full bibliography ; A. Pératé, L’ Archéo- 
logie Chretienne; A. L. Frothingham, The Monuments of 
Christian Rome; H. Crosby Butler, Architecture and 
other Arts, etc.; Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, etec.; Sir 
W. Ramsey and Miss Lowthian Bell, The Thousand and 
One Churches; ©. M. Kaufmann, Die Menasstadt, etc.; 
T. D. Lowrie, Christian Art and Archeology. 

253 


O54 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BYzANTINE.—O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art; Ch. Diehl, 
Manuel @ Art Byzantine: A. Van Millingen, The Churches 
of Constantinople, etc.; Schultz and Barnsley, The 
Monastery of St. Luke, ete. 


THE East.—Saladin and Migeon, Manuel d Art Musulman ; 
F. Sarre, Dankmdler Persischer Baukunst ; Sarre and 
Herzfeld, Archdologische Reise im EHuphrat, etc. 


RoMANESQUE.—G. J. Rivoira, Lombardic Architecture ; 
Rohault de Fleury, La Messe; Cattaneo, Architecture in 
Ltaly from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century’; A. Venturi, 
Storia del? Arte Italiana. 


Saxon, Etc.—Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England; 
J. Anderson, The Harly Christian Monuments of 
Scotland; J. Romilly Allen, The Monumental History of 
the British Church, etc. 


Gotrnic.—C. Eulart, Manuel del? Archéologie Francaise ; CO. H. 
Moore, Development of Gothic Architecture; E. 8. Prior, 
A History of Gothic Art in England; A. K. Porter, 
Medieval Architecture; E. Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire 
Raisonné, etc. ; F. Bond, Gothic Architecture in England ; 
Sir G. G. Scott, Lectures on the Rise, etc., of Medieval 
Art. 


THE RENAISSANCE.—W. J. Anderson, Architecture of the 
Renaissance in Italy ; C. H. Moore, Character of Renais- 
sance Architecture; Reg. T. Blomfield, A History of 
Renaissance Architecture in England, A History of Renais- 
sance Architecture in France; W. H. Ward, The Archi- 
tecture of the Renaissance in France. 


Some Smatt Votumes.—The best introductory books for 
Egyptian, Greek and Early Christian Art are the Guides 
to the several departments of the British Museum. Parker’s 
Concise Glossary of Gothic Architecture and T. D. Atkinson’s 
English Architecture are useful handbooks. See also 
G. H. West’s Gothic Architecture in England and France. 
For the Renaissance, see Reg. T. Blomfield’s Smaller 
History of Renaissance Architecture. 


INDEX 


ACROTERIA, 101 

Apses, 115 

Arches, Egyptian, 53; pointed, 56, 
111, 152, 163, 166; Babylonian, 
71; Greek, 110; cusped, 144, 164, 
166, 189 ; Byzantine, 147; horse- 
shoe, 164 

Architecture, morphology of, 8, 
248; powers of, 9, 15, 65, 108, 
135, 209, 248; true classification 
of, 9; and change, 9; definition 
of, 9; and building, 10; and 
decoration, 13, 243; and magic, 
13, 18; lost elements of, 14 ; 
and materials, 15; origins of, 
18; and need, 18; wooden, 25, 
81; Homeric, 80; first prin- 
ciples in, 1385; beauty in, 241, 
249 


Basilicas, 115, 128 

Baths, 114 

Bricks, 15, 53; burnt, 58, 119 

Brickwork, undulating, 59 

Bronze, use of, 76, 102, 174 

Buildings, round, 24, 86, 115; 
square, 24 


Carpentry, 25, 125 

Caryatides, 100 

eae re Egyptian, 21; English, 
215 ff. 

Churches, 133, 176, 183, 187 

Columns, early, 14; origins of, 26, 
80; Assyrian, 73; Ionic, 73; 
Cretan, 76; Doric, 87, 100; By- 
zantine, 137 ff. 

Concrete, 120, 130 


Decoration, origins of, 16, 27; 
naturalism in, 79; Cufic, 152; 
Arab, 159 

Design, 105, 107, 208, 204, 242, 243 


255 


Domes, 54, 56 ff., 71, 75, 78, 108, 
122, 142, 147, 152, 158, 160, 162, 
179, 181 

Doors, 104, 150 


Engineering, 107, 180, 235, 250 


Factory chimneys, 12 

Fortifications, Egyptian, 52; Assy- 
rian, 72 

Friezes, 75, 91 


Gables, 84, 90 


Ideals, Egyptian, 61, 64; Greek, 
81, 98, 96, 106; Roman, 107, 126, 
131; Gothic, 201; Renaissance, 
229, 232 


Labyrinths, 46, 76 


Masonry, wrought, first use of, 803 
pyramid, 37, 40, 58; accuracy of, 
60, 62; Cretan, 77; Greek, 97 

Mastabas, 25, 34 ff, 

Monoliths, 49 

Mosaics, 120, 129, 186, 154, 165 

Mouldings, origin of, 28; Greek, 
99, 106 ; Byzantine, 144, 155 


Obelisks, 48, 64 

Origins, of architecture, 18; of 
decoration, 16, 27; of squaro 
building, 24; of columns, 26, 30; 
of mouldings, 28; of pyramids, 
44 ; of labyrinths, 46 ; of temples, 
49, 82; of arches, 538, 72; of 
vaults, 53, 72; of domes, 54; of 
cities, 72; of drainage, 72; of 
bricks, 72; of slab-ceilings, 74; 
of rosettes, 743; of Doric frieze, 
77; of Greek art, 82; of the 
plinth, 85; of the peristyle, 85; 


256 


of Greek orders, 87, 95; of the 
cornice, 88 ; of cusping, 144 
Orientation, 61 


Painting, Egyptian, 33, 34, 50, 655 
Cretan, 76; Greek, 90, 99; Roman, 
129; Romanesque, 192, 197 

Palaces, Egyptian, 51 ; Babylonian, 

2 


3 
Pattern, 16, 165, 167, 192 
Planning, 126, 156, 180, 184, 193 
Plastering, 120, 129 
Prehistoric art, 19 
Proportion, 62 ff., 95, 205, 239 
Pyramids, 31, 35 ff., 44; angles of, 
88; durability of, 40; size of, 
40; casing stones of, 40, 415 
courts of, 41; cost of, 41; origin 
of, 44 ; hidden chambers of, 46 ff. 


Quatrefoil, the, 189 


Roofs and ceilings, stone, 50, 76 
Round buildings, 24, 86, 115 


Sandbags, use of, 46 

Sculpture, Egyptian, 32, 64; Baby- 
lonian, 73; Greek, 91; Roman- 
esque, 181; Saxon, 185; Gothic, 
209 

Sphinx, the, 44 


INDEX 


Square buildings, 24 
Sees glass, 175, 182, 209, 214, 
22 


Staircases, 79, 103, 106 
Stars on ceiling, 36, 75 
Stonehenge, 14, 78 
Symbolism, 51, 61 


Temples, Egyptian, 49, symbolism 
of, 51; Babylonian, 70; Greek, 
82 

Theatres and amphitheatres, 114 

Tiles, glazed, 36, 58, 65, 73, 1643 
Roof-, 90, 91, 102, 157; casings 
of, 108, 117 

Towers, 115, 136, 187 

Towns, Egyptian, 52 


Variety in detail, 94 
Vaults, Egyptian, 53; Babylonian, 
71; Hellenistic, 108, 122; Byzan- 
tine, 148, 155; Romanesque, 179, 
180, 195 ; Gothic, 196, 198, 202 


Walls, leaning, 25; recesses in, 28 ; 
Greek, 98 

Whitewash, 58, 99 

Windows, 52, 103, 144, 150, 164 


Ziggurats, 71 


4 it A ‘ 
4 Hh 4) 
ie 4 \ Sem 
a L ine a ey 


mn) 
at 








ie 


—, 


es 








